Developer(s) Circa 1605, Inc. Operating system License Freeware | Development status Relaunched Type News Aggregator | |
 | ||
Initial release October 16, 2012 (2012-10-16) | ||
Circa News or more simply, Circa, is a news service founded in 2012, by Matt Galligan, Ben Huh, and Arsenio Santos. Accessible via a website, a mobile app, and related social media, the service features news stories and features consisting of individual bits of information. The service went dark due to financial reasons on June 24, 2015, though it relaunched in Spring 2016 under the ownership of media company Sinclair Broadcast Group.
Contents
Early years
On October 16, 2012, Circa launched their application for iOS. The app featured news and information from different sources and viewpoints that were stitched together into a story that could be shifted around and changed easily as stories developed. The founders' aim for Circa was "to pursue a more pure definition of news with truths divorced from conjecture, opinion or biased analysis.”
On September 24, 2014, Circa announced version 3.0 of their mobile applications. The update added new features such as a daily briefing service called "Wire", which aggregates top stories over a 24-hour period. Circa would expand from the app world to the internet in February 2015 with the announcement of a web version, CircaNews.com.
On April 30, 2015, Circa announced that it was looking for a buyer after failing to obtain a new round of venture capital funding. On June 21, 2015, Circa halted its news reporting operations due to financial reasons. Three days later, on June 24, Circa announced that it will shut down and go on an "indefinite hiatus" due to its inability to secure an acquirer. CEO and co-founder Matt Galligan bid farewell to Circa in a blog post titled "Farewell to Circa News"; in the post, he admired Circas' successes, but lamented the company's failure to become a sustainable business.
Acquisition and relaunch
On November 22, 2015, a few former Circa employees were among those discovering that the CircaNews.com web domain was again active, stating a simple message that "Circa will be back soon..." A report by the Nieman Journalism Lab revealed that the domain name was registered one month earlier to Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair confirmed on December 7, 2015, that it had acquired Circa News, its intellectual property, and assets earlier in 2015, and aimed to relaunch Circa in the spring of 2016. The acquisition of Circa, which will be funded by a Sinclair subsidiary (Sinclair Digital Ventures) and potentially other investors, fulfills a possibility Circa CEO Matt Galligan mentioned at Circa's closure the previous June that the company could sell or white-label its technology to a news-producing company for use in its own apps.
The revived Circa formally went live on July 18, 2016, with a redesigned app and website (complete with a new URL, Circa.com). Circa is led by John Solomon, the former vice-president of content & business development for the Washington Times; Solomon was tapped by Sinclair as Circa's chief creative officer in December 2015 and promoted to chief operating officer 12 months later.
In a vein similar to the site's founders' original "truths divorced from conjecture" intent, Sinclair aims to "let the content drive [Circa]" and not let the site adhere to any set political or cultural viewpoint, with Sinclair citing Vice News and Breitbart as "partisan-driven" news sites the new Circa would not intentionally emulate. Though Sinclair has had a reputation for airing political, at times conservative-influenced content on its stations, its intention with Circa, as the company expressed in the build-up to the site's relaunch, is to present information with "no spin, just facts and transparency" and in "an irreverent tone" that will allow the site's target audience (young adults 18 to 35 years old) to form its own opinions.
Features
Since its original iteration, Circa's mobile app and website has offered “atomization” of news rather than “summarization”. “Atomization”, as originally expressed by Circa, means “to break down a story into its core elements: facts, stats, quotes and media”, as opposed to a summary where content is reduced for quicker reading or users are linked elsewhere for the full story. Circa initially pushed multiple updates, also known as “points”, over the days, weeks and months as stories continued to develop. The Circa app also allowed users to "Follow" particular stories in order to receive future developments.
As relaunched in 2016, the Circa app and the Circa.com website retains the original Circa's “atomization” approach to delivering news. The redesigned Circa emphasizes "short- and long-form video, optimized for mobile and social media engagement." Circa utilizes original reporting from its own 80-person staff, user-generated content, and access to video feeds and reportage from Sinclair's 172 owned-or-operated TV stations.
Circa features several portals and micro-sites accessible through its website, app, and social media platforms. These portals include the following: