By Marcus McCarthy

Temple’s Center for Public Interest Journalism announced Friday that its nonprofit news website AxisPhilly will cease operations, and a new project will be started in its place.

Started in 2012, AxisPhilly was intended to cover local civic issues but, according to a press release on the organization’s website, “did not achieve consistent local impact and fell short of serving as a collaborative hub for the emerging news ecosystem, both of which were goals at founding.”

Run through the university’s School of Media and Communication, the CPIJ, which oversaw AxisPhilly, will change its focus to a startup by former Digital First Media and WashingtonPost.com executive Jim Brady. The news startup will be called Brother.ly, according to Technical.ly Philly.

Brady’s startup will seek to “hit younger audiences that may not be using traditional journalism resources,” Temple’s journalism department chair Andrew Mendelson told        philly.com.

As well as starting Brother.ly, Brady will teach a course in entrepreneurial journalism at Temple. OpenDataPhilly, the city’s official open data portal that was run by AxisPhilly, will be managed by the CPIJ.

AxisPhilly last year received a national online journalism award for general excellence. The website, which had four full-time employees who will receive severance, was created with funding from a $2.4 million grant by the William Penn Foundation. With lacking readership and dwindling funds, the project needed work, something SMC Dean David Boardman said was not worth pursuing.

“The burn rate was such that this was going to come to an end one way or another unless we could find new funding,” Boardman told Philly.com. “It was our judgment that finding funding for this…was not where we wanted to put our energy.”

Operation of AxisPhilly will cease June 13.

Marcus McCarthy can be reached at marcus.mccarthy@temple.edu or on Twitter @marcusmccarthy6.