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I'm guessing many HN readers aren't going to be familiar with the Toast (though I might be wrong?) and just wanted to preemptively defend it. Browsing the front
by benbreen 10y ago
I'm guessing many HN readers aren't going to be familiar with the Toast (though I might be wrong?) and just wanted to preemptively defend it. Browsing the front page right now, it's easy to mistake it for clickbait-y sites pandering to 20 or 30-something women like Jezebel or Bustle. It's so much better than its peers, though. In some ways I actually see it as kindred with some of my favorite elements of the HN community: an unusually thoughtful and respectful comment section (relatively speaking), and an openness to the eclectic so long as it's interesting. For instance, among other things on the front page, there's this little snippet on "How to Politely Decline a Proposal from a Byzantine Emperor," which is exactly what it sounds like:
http://the-toast.net/2016/05/09/how-to-politely-decline-a-proposal-from-the-emperor-of-byzantium/ http://the-toast.net/2016/05/09/how-to-politely-decline-a-pr...
It was also one of the only independently run online publications that seemed to me to be on its way to being quietly successful in a "two or three people can make a small profit on it indefinitely" sort of way. Guess I was too optimistic. Anyway, RIP the Toast. I'll miss it.
- x0x0 10y agoI try not to be too grumpy, but you know, in light of the recent thread on here about paying for online content (bad!), paywalls (also bad!) and anything but static, self-hosted, non-targeted image ads worth probably under 1c cpm (other ads are superbad!) this is sort of the inevitable outcome... I actually find gawker sites pretty amazing. You can dislike some of what they publish, but they've succeeded at the most important thing: making enough money to pay writers and keep publishing. And they regularly, by accident or not, commit serious acts of journalism!
- patmcguire 10y agoDeadspin is actually pretty good. Sports journalism is kind of the opposite of tech journalism: smart things written about dumb people.
- jolux 10y agoWhy do you think athletes are dumb?
- patmcguire 10y agoYeah, I thought about this before I posted. I mean, they're not explicitly selected on intelligence, so you get the full spectrum of people. And there are a lot of dumb people in the world, which kind of gets cut off by the process of deciding who gets to be on TV, etc, unless you're also a good athlete.
- jolux 10y agoMost quarterbacks actually are quite smart. And also there are plenty of dumb people who get to be on TV: take Wolf Blitzer for example.