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Feb. 10, 2016, 10:52 a.m.
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LINK: www.nytimes.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Laura Hazard Owen   |   February 10, 2016

The New York Times is shuttering its tech blog, Bits, as a separate destination. From a post Wednesday:

“When Bits was born, blogs were the path toward a digital future. They were the only way for us to publish quickly, without the constraints of print deadlines and production. No more. We now have a home-grown publishing system that allows us to more seamlessly integrate our tech coverage across the web, apps, print, social media — everywhere you find our journalism.

So for clarity and simplicity, the blog goes away and all tech stories will now carry the label of Tech.

You will still see the Bits identifier on some of our journalism. The Bits email newsletter will continue, as will Bits special sections and daily reports that summarize the big news of the day.”

The New York Times did a big rethink of its blogs in 2014, shutting down almost half of them. “There’s little chance that our marquee blogs, ones like DealBook, Well, Bits, will be going anywhere anytime soon,” then-assistant managing editor Ian Fisher (he’s now head of the Times’ investigations department) told Poynter at the time.

Last November, the Times shut down the eight-year-old City Room. For more on how blogs sparked and changed the Times’ digital evolution, you’ll want to read my colleague Joseph Lichterman’s entire oral history, but here’s what one former Times employee told him:

The success of a lot of the blogs was, in some ways, part of their downfall. For lack of a better term, they started competing with the existing sections.

The list of remaining Times blogs is here.

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