Remember the Labor Herald? Around this time last year, we reported that Labor’s own Crikey hadn’t quite met its own lofty ambitions, losing its founding editor and getting only slight support from Labor parliamentarians mere months after creation. While the Labor Herald could and was intended to work as a place for MPs to place their op-eds, more mainstream media sources are also after the same content, and often able to guarantee a wider readership of it.

The Labor Herald was even quieter in 2016 — it barely came up when we talked to Labor operatives about their digital campaigning during the election. Now it appears the Herald has gone on “hiatus”. The ABC’s Frank Keany noticed and tweeted about it this morning, and the Herald’s own Twitter account suggests it’s been offline since December 3 (how’s that for well-earned breaks). None of the articles are viewable — all previous links redirect to the page saying its offline. It’s supposedly not permanent — the page says it’s just a “short break so that we can rest up, recharge, and get ready for 2017”.

But no one would be very surprised if it didn’t come back in 2017 at all. After all, the Labor Herald was the passion project of former Labor national secretary George Wright. He jumped to BHP in late August.