Ed Silverman of Pharmalot is signing off

Ed Silverman was one of the original beat bloggers.

He was a shinning beacon of how to do the practice right. He doggedly reported his beat, often putting in 12+ hour days. And be built from scratch an online juggernaut that won awards, brought in lots of visitors and fomented fantastic discussions about the pharmaceutical industry. 

Sadly, he has accepted a buy-out with The Star-Ledger and will be moving on from his popular blog Pharmalot. Silervman told me it was a really tough decision for him to make, but he felt it was the right decision to make for him and his family. The Star-Ledger offered a very generous buy-out in Silverman’s view, and there really is no guarantee that the Star-Ledger, let alone Pharmalot, will be around in a year or two.

For two glorious years, I have had the privilege and good fortune to run this site. Now, though, the time has come to walk away. This was a difficult decision, but one that is rooted in the turmoil engulfing the newspaper business.

Earlier this year, Star-Ledger publisher George Arwady threatened that the paper would be shut down if not enough buy-outs were accepted and not enough contracts were reworked (this is if a buyer couldn’t be found, and it’s hard to imagine anyone interested in buying a struggling large metro newspaper right now). The paper lost 40% of its editorial staff in 2008. Against this backdrop, it’s hard to fault any journalist for taking a buy-out.

The future of Pharmalot is up in the air. The Star-Ledger owns the rights to it and hasn’t decided what, if anything, to do with it right now. It’s possible it might become a footnote in beat blogging history.

If that’s the case, Pharmalot will go down as a case study in how to successful beat blog. Silverman attracted a loyal following with industry insiders, and Pharmalot was home to a lot of lively debate among users (often with links and citations). The site itself was wildly popular:

As of last month, we notched about 11,000 unique daily visitors and some 330,000 monthly pageviews on a 30-day rolling basis.

As for Silverman, he is moving on to Elsevier, a publisher of science and health information. Silverman may be involved with some blogging projects with the company. What form his blogging would take remains to be seen.

We’ll have an in-depth podcast with Silverman up shortly where he talks about the lessons he learned from Pharmalot and some of the reasons why he felt it was time to move on.

Silverman cultivated an incredible community of people with great knowledge of the pharma industry. They helped him report, and they also engaged in lively conversations amongst themselves. They’ll sorely miss Silverman and Pharmalot. 

Here is a sample of the same the comments users left after Silverman announced he was moving on from Pharmalot:

“I began to regularly check up on this blog because of the quality of the information and writing. Some blogs are poorly designed, terribly written, and full of bad information. For me, Pharmalot has stoodout and has been an excellent source of news and commentary about the pharmaceutical industry. Thanks for the hard work and good luck in your future endeavors!” – G

“Congratulations, Ed, on the buyout opportunity. But a tremendous loss to the on-line health/pharma community.

Your content was timely and insightful, and became a must-read daily. While it is sad to see the fate of papers such as the Star-Ledger, sites such as Pharmalot are the prescription needed for the future of Newhouse.

Enjoy some time, but find a way back to us soon.” – C

“Ed, sad to see you and this website go. It was my go to site to find out the latest inside information on the big pharma. This does leave a tremendous hole on the web for accurate and up to the minute reporting on issues relating to the pharmaceutical industry. I wish you all the luck and let us all know where you show up again, because I know you will be back.” – Craig Niedenthal