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Gawker Media shuts Valleywag, offers Consumerist for sale
- cstejerean 18y agoNot surprised given the quality of content on Valleywag, after all it was banned from HN.
- unalone 18y agoValleywag I was never fond of: it, along with Gawker, always seemed too deliberately nasty, without ever really being interesting. It's a shame about the Consumerist, though. It had some excellent articles. Still does, on occasion.
- greyman 18y ago>> too deliberately nasty Well said. I have nothing against tabloids per se, but I always felt that they just didn't know how to do it properly, or that the tabloid practice applied to tech scene didn't work that well. I don't miss them...
- dnaquin 18y agoBut. But. But. Where am I going to hear about what Justin's up to?
- alaskamiller 18y agoMeh.
- aston 18y agoAre you being transferred?
- alaskamiller 18y agoMaybe Giz, but it eats up a lot of time though. I should just finish out my web apps. Already hearing some sites that need writers to establish themselves as the next VW.
- unalone 18y agoWait, meaning other sites are trying, or other sites are writing you asking for you on their staff?
- alaskamiller 18y agoBoth.
- thomasswift 18y agothe first post on the new consumerist will write itself if they ripoff someone on the sale
- ardit33 18y agoNooo..... I actually like valleywag :( Sure it was nasty, and it was gossipy, and not journalism at all, but it was a lot more frank and honest than a bunch of other tech. blogs out there.
- ojbyrne 18y agoI loved valleywag and will miss it. My few appearances there have nothing to do with it. I just love the tabloid mentality, and my experiences living in Norcal screamed at me that it was ripe for that kind of approach. Oh well.
- ilamont 18y agoThey stepped over a few lines, but writers actually got scoops from time to time. It was generally a fun read. The Wag will be missed.
- jmtame 18y agoI think startups are the wrong place for a gossip rag to be hanging out. Keep that garbage in Hollywood please.
- ojbyrne 18y agoYou've obviously not spent much time hanging around with the "Web 2.0" crowd in SF. Ripe for ridicule.
- jmtame 18y agoI've seen my share of gossip-worthy stories, but I'd rather hear about them in the dead pool.
- ojbyrne 18y agoExcept "buzz" is part of what produces growth. And it's almost guaranteed that "buzz" is generally empty, shallow people interacting with other empty, shallow people (because that's 90% of the world's population). That produces gossip, and buzz, and more buzz, and tabloid journalism, and billions of dollars. "Hollywood" is the perfect paradigm for that.
- gojomo 18y agoThe kind of "buzz" that creates growth for tech companies is "gee whiz, check out this young/new/innovative/life-changing/giant-killing company/technology." Not cynical mockery. And the culture of vapid celebrity that sells magazines/TV/movies doesn't sell tech. Even the Facebook/MySpace masses could hardly care less about gossip of those companies' founders and executives. At best, such gossip is industry 'inside baseball'... and so it should be judged for accuracy and relevance, not snark and salaciousness.
- gojomo 18y agoExcept, rather than deflating the vanity and pretentiousness, Valleywag on net inflated it, directing even more incestuous attention to superficialities and private lives. I wish Denton luck in his other titles. I hope Boutin, the one byline most consistently puckish rather than nasty, continues to find other outlets. But overall I'm glad Valleywag is folding; it leaked an unhealthy amount of sewage into the intertubes.
- tectonic 18y agoSeems like an opportunity for some budding writer to take its place.
- petercooper 18y agoA writer with a backer / publisher, maybe. It'd be hard for an independent writer to do it for fear of crossing the lines and getting sued ;-)
- sahaj 18y agothe startup party is over. i really doubt HN will take off. but then again, most people here don't want that anyway.
- skmurphy 18y agoI don't think the startup party is over: I think the tourists have gone home. HN has taken off as an extremely useful community for serious entrepreneurs. And based on the vast majority of submissions and comments that I read, "most people here" want serious conversation.
- josefresco 18y agoHacker News: Serious business. All I need is a picture of a cat.
- sahaj 18y agoi don't think the tourists have gone home: i think they ran out of money. you say tomato, i say potato. did i say the community was not useful or that it didn't want serious conversation?
- skmurphy 18y agoWhen tourists run of out money they go home. That's why they are called tourists and not homeless.
- unalone 18y agoHacker News take off? God, I hope it doesn't. I like this community as it is: small, informed, grammatically capable, and rather elitist.
- hooande 18y agoding dong the witch is dead!
- tlrobinson 18y agoValleywag occasionally had some interesting stuff... key word: "occasionally". Most of the time they were just picking really petty things to complain about, trying to turn it into a controversy. Maybe now that it's just a column on Gawker the signal-noise ratio will increase (hopefully they'll offer a Valleywag-only RSS feed... I don't care much for the rest of Gawker)
- mattmaroon 18y agoDamn, now how am I going to find out what Kevin Rose is up to?
- apgwoz 18y agoI believe he'll keep you covered. Afterall, he does have @kevinscold (found via valleywag).
- unalone 18y agoNot to mention a blog, and formerly a tumblelog as well. The guy's connected.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI guess the sarcasm wasn't evident.
- beamso 18y agoCrap! I liked Valleywag. :(
- biohacker42 18y agoWhat happened here is that a few blogs like The Consumerist were profitable enough to support a few people, Gawker bought them to try to make something much bigger out of them. Now that the economy is turning sour they will try to sell them. But if you're efficient enough you might still be able to eek out a living from a blog like the consumerist. It's not a business with a capitol B, but it's a living.
- virtualdarwin 18y agoValleywag was good entertainment. Tabloids for geeks. Gonna miss it.