The WordPress Media Corps — launched in March 2024 to improve collaboration between the project and independent media in the WordPress ecosystem — has officially been shut down.

Launched as an “experiment,” the initiative was designed to help community-run publications like WP Tavern, Do the Woo, and The Repository access timely updates and insights from project leadership and WordPress Make teams. But it was effectively abandoned after former–Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy and marketing contributor Reyes Martínez left Automattic during the company’s “alignment” layoffs in October 2024.

In March, Nicholas Garofalo, Director of Marketing for WordPress.org at Automattic, asked media partners on WordPress Slack whether the experiment should be closed. Most agreed that it had been helpful until “the flywheel stopped” — as Matt Medeiros from The WP Minute put it — when Haden Chomphosy and Martínez left.

Last week, Garofalo confirmed the shutdown, citing low engagement, scalability issues, and delays that often made briefings less useful than real-time updates shared on platforms like X.

A Short-Lived Experiment

Haden Chomphosy launched the Media Corps as a way to support independent media already marketing WordPress, especially those seeking access to reliable, timely information about project updates.

It was also designed to help overcome a complex reality: WordPress’s marketing infrastructure — including WordPress.org and its social channels — is owned personally by project co-founder Matt Mullenweg. WordPress Marketing Team contributors had long asked for access to data to help inform their work, and had also sought to contribute to marketing strategies, and were frustrated that they weren’t able to contribute more meaningful work.

“Marketing strategy efforts in the past have been thwarted in closed conversations, which is why I asked for this discussion to be in the open,” commented former Marketing Team co-rep Jenni McKinnon below Haden Chomphosy’s Making a WordPress Media Corps announcement in March 2024.

“Also, according to the answers in the last-minute meeting in the Marketing channel on Slack today, it was literally pointed out that marketing strategies will be tabled and won’t move forward. As such, I’m sure we could propose a strategy, as you stated, but it will be fully ignored as has been the case up until this point and pivot.

“With this new direction, how do you see non-Automattic-sponsored contributors contributing other than with a few lines of copy or with photos?”

In April 2024, the WordPress Marketing Team was “temporarily archived,” and leadership of the Media Corps was handed over to Martínez.

Martínez ran regular briefings and checked in with media partners, but things never really clicked. Time zones made it hard for some to show up. Briefings often dragged on for over an hour, and sometimes came too late to be useful — like the Learn WordPress relaunch briefing, which happened after the redesign was already live, making it too late for media partners to provide meaningful, timely coverage.”

When Martínez and Haden Chomphosy left Automattic, the #media-corps WordPress Slack channel went quiet. The experiment was supposed to wrap up by December, but instead, it went silent.

March Check-In and Final Decision

In March 2025, Garofalo posted to the #media-corps Slack channel asking whether the group should wind down. He invited contributors to share what they had learned. Bob Dunn (Do the Woo), Matt Medeiros and Eric Karkovack (The WP Minute), Lawrence Ladomery (WP BizDev), and The Repository participated in the discussion.

The general consensus: the experiment had value, but it lost momentum when Haden Chomphosy and Reyes left. Garofalo responded that the model wasn’t scalable or sustainable — and that in many cases, WordPress project updates were appearing on X faster than briefings could be scheduled.

“The Media Corps faced challenges, and clearly couldn’t find its footing,” Garofalo told The Repository. “We shouldn’t be afraid to try new things, and also shouldn’t be afraid to put an end to things that aren’t working.”

What Now?

With the Marketing Team still archived, WordPress’s current marketing efforts are being led by Garofalo and his Automattic-sponsored colleague Brett McSherry. Their work spans the marketing funnel: growing awareness through social platforms, building consideration via updates to the WordPress Showcase, and driving advocacy through support for community events.

These projects, Garofalo said, are open to contributors, and others are welcome to start their own efforts. “People are more than welcome to join those efforts, and I recommend them because they are projects with momentum,” he said.

Garofalo also recently pushed for syncing WordPress TV content to the official YouTube channel, which is now live.

While these initiatives don’t address broader structural or strategic gaps, they offer a starting point for contributors looking to reengage — and could even help pave the way for restarting the Marketing Team.

A Familiar Ending

The Media Corps joins a long line of well-meaning WordPress marketing initiatives that began with promise but fizzled out. From Yoast founder Joost de Valk’s brief tenure as Marketing Lead in 2019 to the shelving of the Marketing Team in 2024, WordPress has repeatedly struggled to define how it should be marketed.

Yet the day-to-day work continues. Garofalo says contributors are welcome to join existing projects including social media campaigns, the WordPress Showcase, and event support. What remains unclear is whether those efforts will ever coalesce into something more coordinated, or whether WordPress marketing will remain decentralized by design.

Image: WordCamp Asia 2024.

Correction, 15 May 2025: In an earlier version of the story, we reported that WordPress Marketing Team contributors had long asked for greater influence over the product roadmap, branding, and marketing strategy, as well as direct access to marketing channels — requests that were never granted. The story has been updated to clarify that the Marketing Team actually sought access to data to support their work, and their attempts at contributing to marketing strategy were ignored.