News site monitoring Philly gun violence ends daily reports

For more than two years, the news website guncrisis.org documented nearly every shooting in Philadelphia and highlighted potential solutions to gun violence.

On Friday, it halted its daily reporting because it didn’t have the money to keep going.

Editor Jim MacMillan said the site ran on the elbow grease of volunteers and a few thousand dollars in contributions. He said he applied for grant funding, but it never came through.

MacMillan has mixed emotions about the decision to sharply curtail the site’s operations, much as he did when he returned to the United States after covering the Iraq War for the Associated Press.

“I feel greatly relieved that I’m not going to have to get up and look in my email box every morning to see who’s been shot … because that’s a very difficult way to start your day,” he said. “But I feel guilty. I feel uneasy. At least when I left Iraq, I was being replaced by another colleague. I don’t know who’s going to do this work.”

On the bright side, MacMillan said he has had very preliminary talks with a couple organizations about possibly keeping guncrisis.org alive. Even if that doesn’t happen, the site will continue emailing a monthly newsletter.

There were 247 homicides in Philadelphia last year, most of them involving firearms.