4 ms·
Sometimes I really do miss Valleywag. Such funny reads!
by vidoc 11y ago
Sometimes I really do miss Valleywag. Such funny reads!
- pen2l 11y agoWait, what? Is valleywag shutting down?
- minimaxir 11y agoThe Valleywag reboot started with Sam Biddle, Nitasha Tiku, with Kevin Montgomery joining later. Simultaneously, Biddle was moved to main Gawker after causing an advertiser to drop millions in spending, Tiku move to The Verge (later, BuzzFeed), and Montgomery moved to BuzzFeed. Dan Lyons attempted to restart Valleywag but due to personal reasons it was short lived. Valleywag has been dead since.
- pen2l 11y agoBut it's not dead-dead, http://valleywag.gawker.com http://valleywag.gawker.com is still running, still producing new articles as you can see.
- minimaxir 11y agoYou may want to check the dates on those "new" articles :P Most of those articles are reposts from elsewhere on Gawker as well.
- pen2l 11y agoAh, you're right, sorry about that. Kind of a weird decision to just let it... die. I mean, valleywag's name branding has considerable value, if they just employ folks who keep on writing articles that valleywag always had, it would work well.
- gkoberger 11y agoNick Douglas was a quality satirist, and under him things were a good balance of smarmy and smart. He was an insider and his writing was from the viewpoint of someone who loved SV but wanted to improve it. Ironically, he was fired for being too insider-y. Biddle fancied himself a tech Jon Stewart, but really he was the crazy guy on the street yelling stuff at people walking by. His distain for everything and everyone tech was palpable. I had hope when Dan Lyons took over (given his brilliant Fake Steve blog), but his choice in low-brow posts were incredibly disappointing. He said he wouldn't stoop to those levels, and then instantly did. I suspect he was pressured into it, and left because of that. At its best, Valleywag is a sorely needed insiders view of our culture. At it's worst, it's absolute garbage. Now I suppose we have things like @StartupLJackson on Twitter, or Silicon Valley on HBO to fill that void. (Not so coincidentally, Dan Lyons is a writer on the show.)