For those who have written articles on DriveTribe, the staff says that you can back up a copy of your work by generating a PDF via the “Share” icon of any post. This will save a copy of the article in its current state along with the view counter. Quizzes and polls cannot be saved.
I asked my colleague Hazel Southwell for her take on the DriveTribe shutdown, to which she responded, “DriveTribe was never a perfect website; the combination of complete editorial freedom for users and necessary sponsored content by journalists to keep the lights on after Clarkson, Hammon and May’s initial money ran out was always a strange pairing. But the sheer breadth of what it covered, as a consequence, was brilliant and let a lot of writers get started.
“One of the things that was most noticeable was that editors picked talent out of its ranks, actively looking for people doing interesting things and cultivating new work. That didn’t always mean it made the right choices but some extremely kind, talented, and good people who made a huge difference to my own career and other people’s (Mike Fernie, Richard Beech, Tim Rodie all spring instantly to mind) worked sincerely on curating the strange basket of eggs that it was, even and especially after the founders disconnected from it. There’s loads you could say about its premise being cynical—to use user-generated content as editorial—but the execution was loving, sincere, and nurturing.”
I’d recommend that users also submit their link to the Wayback Machine so that others can easily find a copy using the same link later on.
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