First off, thank you!! It takes an amazing community to build something as unique as JPG, but it takes an even more remarkable, passionate, and committed community to come to JPG’s rescue. And that’s exactly what you did.

Your outpouring of support–whether on Flickr forums, blogs, or savejpg.com–demonstrated to the world (along with the investment community) that JPG is simply too special and unique to vanish. Our new investors agree with you–and believe strongly in the potential of JPG as a business. So I’m looking forward to working with them to creatively drive revenues while enhancing the quality of the JPG experience. I’m also looking forward to working with our Premier Community Partner, Adorama, to develop wonderful opportunities for all of you to reach a broader audience as well as better engage around the photography equipment you use and love. More on that to come!

Secondly, please be patient with us. While it’s very exciting to be able to continue operating this website and the broader business of 8020 Media, it’s going to take a little bit of time to get our operations back up and running at 100%. Therefore, it may take longer than normal to get responses from JPG Support or resolve issues that may have arisen with the website in the past 60 days. Thanks for your understanding on this.

And finally, start getting excited! The recent events at 8020 Media have given us a rare opportunity to step back, better understand the business, and develop a strategic plan that drives revenues while giving back to all of you–our incredible community members, without whom this site simply wouldn’t exist.

Today is a particularly sad day for all of us at JPG and 8020 Media.

We’ve spent the last few months trying to make the business behind JPG sustain itself, and we’ve reached the end of the line. We all deeply believe in everything JPG represents, but we just weren’t able to raise the money needed to keep JPG alive in these extraordinary economic times. We sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success. As a result, jpgmag.com will shut down on Monday, January 5, 2009.

The one thing we’ve been the most proud of: your amazing talent. We feel honored and humbled to have been able to share jpgmag.com with such a dynamic, warm, and wonderful community of nearly 200,000 photographers. The photography on the website and in the magazine was adored by many, leaving no doubt that this community created work of the highest caliber. The kindness, generosity, and support shared among members made it a community in the truest sense of the word, and one that we have loved being a part of for these past two years.

We wish we could have found a way to leave the site running for the benefit of the amazing folks who have made JPG what it is, and we have spent sleepless nights trying to figure something out, all to no avail. Some things you may want to do before the site closes:

- Download the PDFs of back issues, outtakes, and photo challenge selections. We’ll always have the memories!  www.jpgmag.com/downloads/archives.html
- Make note of your favorite photographers. You may want to flip through your favorites list and jot down names and URLs of some of the people you’d like to stay in touch with. You may even want to cut and paste your contacts page into a personal record.
- Catch up with your fellow members. Our roots are in this humble flickr forum and we recommend going back to find fellow members, discuss the situation, or participate in another great photo community. www.flickr.com/groups/jpgmag/
- Keep in touch. This has always been much more than just a job to each of us, and we’ll miss you guys! We’ll be checking the account jpgletters@gmail.com in our free time going forward. We can’t promise to reply to every email (since we’ll be busy tuning up our resumes) but we’d love to hear from you.
- Stay posted. Although the magazine is ceasing publication, we’ll be updating you on what’s happening with your subscription early next week.

We’re soggy-eyed messes, but it is what it is. At that, JPGers, we bid you goodbye, and good luck in 2009 and the future.

Laura Brunow Miner
Editor in Chief