Too bad

I really enjoyed the political coverage at Pando:

Over the weekend, Pando fired two of its hardest-hitting editorial staffers, David Sirota and Ted Rall, both nationally syndicated veteran journalists. Sirota recently broke a big story about Chris Christie’s administration awarding pension contracts to hedge funds, private equity groups, and venture capital firms whose employees to donated to the governor’s reelection.

In February, Pando raised $1.2 million in financing from some powerful venture capitalists, including Accel Partners and Founders Fund, both of which invested in prior funding rounds.

Sirota’s scoop about Chris Christie breaking anti-corruption laws was shared and liked 10,000 times on Facebook. According to Quantcast, Pando is only pulling in 859,000 monthly uniques globally and 579,000 uniques in the U.S.

An anonymous source alerted Valleywag to the firings. Neither Rall nor Sirota would comment on why they were fired. But there was a consensus among sources that the decision was not related to budgetary concerns. “It was completely from Sarah Lacy. Paul was the executioner. Apparently it came from complaints from investors in Pando,” according to one Valleywag source. “Sarah basically said there was not enough tech and too much politics.”

I am not certain about the terms of their departure, but I heard Rall was fired without severance but will be compensated through the pay period.

In response to questions from Valleywag, Sirota said: “I had an amazing time working with Pando to break huge stories and never once received any negative feedback from my editors, including when they let me go.”

Rall is a popular political cartoonist. His tenure at Pando lasted less than a month. Within those few weeks, he broke the story that some Uber drivers made less than minimum wage contrary to the company’s claims.