Five years and 441 stories later, farewell to Credit.com (a brief indulgence, forgive me)

It was another good run. Five years and 441 stories. But, like all things, it couldn’t last forever.  Credit.com recently posted my last story. I’m sad about it.

A new FCC ruling on robocalls.   Months of work diving deep into the brutal world of debt collection. Countless financial advise columns  that I’d like to think helped someone.  A lot to be proud of.

My first Credit.com post was dated Aug. 15, 2013 — almost exactly five years ago — “In positive Fed debt report, hidden danger lurks.”  It was a warning that the economic recovery wasn’t all it seemed to be. The next day, I wrote a rather ominous piece about the End of the Digital Peace Dividend.   “The U.S. government is now showing it values control over freedom,” I wrote, and that the early cyber-cold-war would meant the end of the early digital age. I like this think I was onto something back then.

Maybe you haven’t ever visited Credit.com, but I’m sure you’ve seen many of these stories. Through a rather brilliant and far-ranging agreement, Credit.com stories were also syndicated to 100s of outlets.  So they appeared often on USAToday, on Marketwatch, on Yahoo Finance, on MSN. And in dozens of large local newspapers, too, like the Atlanta-Journal Constitution or the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

When I left MSNBC after 20 years and set out my own shingle, my biggest fear was that my stories would disappear from the national conversation.  I care intensely about issues involving consumers, and fairness, and I wanted to keep being a thorn in the side of those who would rip off or mislead people.

Michael Schreiber and Adam Levin at Credit.com gave me that chance.  Credit.com was my first partner as an entrepreneurial journalist; they got first crack at many of my stories, and pushed them out to this ever-expanding list of syndication partners.  They had assembled a great set of experts who offered best-of-breed financial advice and news, and I’m proud of my affiliation with the team.

Credit.com was recently sold and is changing its business model and content strategy. Those experts, Michael, and Adam — they’ve all moved on now, and so now do I.  But I’m very lucky. In this age of job-hopping and quick exits, in the crazy fields of journalism and technology, I’ve had a 20-year stop and a 5-year stop. That’s pretty good.

So, with a series of book, podcast, and writing projects in hand, I head off towards the next project.  I’d love to land another long-term partner in this crazy world of short-term thinking.  I’ll let you know how that goes. But in the meantime, you can always keep up with what I’m doing here at BobSullivan.net; or better yet, by signing up for my email newsletter.