Things are flatlining at The Pulse, the long-running news blog at Comicon.com.  Co-owner Rick Veitch, in a post on the site, announced the departure of Jen Contino, who’d been blogging at The Pulse for eight years.  He and co-owner Steve Conley had to let her go, the post said, because of the decline in the advertising market and a bad debt from an advertiser. 

Meanwhile Heidi MacDonald’s longrunning blog The Beat (“the News Blog of Comics Culture”) has landed at a new location (Comicsbeat.com), following her move away from Publishers Weekly (see “The Beat Moves On”).  We wish Heidi, one of our favorite reads, the best in her new home.

Comicon.com was a great incubator for the comics community on the Web.  The first blogs there, including Vietch’s own Splash Page (see “Veitch Ends the Splash”) were important during the formative period in the early 00s.  And MacDonald’s The Beat also began there, before migrating to Publishers Weekly some 3-1/2 years ago. 

At this time, there’s no news on Comicon.com.  Veitch said the site is stable financially for now, but that “how we’re going to provide the sort of daily news a site like Pulse promises is going to require some fresh planning on our part.”