Observer » Valleywag.com

Yahoo!’s Jerry Yang Steps Down as C.E.O.

Matt Haber — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:44:14 -0400

Last night, purple-pushing internet company Yahoo! announced that co-founder and C.E.O. Jerry Yang would be stepping down from his management role, which he's had since June 2007. Mr. Yang will continue to sit on the company's board and take back his old title (we kid you not): Chief Yahoo!.

Jessica E. Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal framed it as follows:

Yahoo Inc. co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang will step down after the company finds a replacement, closing a tumultuous and short tenure during which Yahoo rejected an offer from Microsoft Corp.'s to buy it.

The New York Times' Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller quote from an email Mr. Yang sent to staff, retaining the Stanford graduate's unique punctuation: "i strongly believe that having transformed our platform and better aligned costs and revenues, we have a unique window for the right ceo to take ownership over the next wave of mission-critical decisions facing the company."

The full note can be found on Valleywag.

Valleywag to Become Part of Gawker; Editorial Staff Cut to One

Matt Haber — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:12:04 -0400

At Nick Denton's Gawker Media, the only constant is change, apparently. Yesterday, Media Mob brought news that the blog network was losing its managing editor and that Consumerist was for sale.

Today, Valleywag, the silicon valley gossip site Mr. Denton launched two and a half years ago (a look back at the site's early days reveals some adorably dated stories like Will we see a real iPod phone?), will be more or less folded into Gawker, according to a post on the site by Paul Boutin.

Here's what Mr. Boutin writes: "In 2009, Owen [Thomas, Valleywag Managing Editor] will be posting full-time, maybe 12-15 posts per day. Everyone else is fired... Denton's trying to follow Wired's footsteps: Take an insidery, localized publication and make it a national daily read."

The strange thing about this is, the re-engineering of Valleywag seems to have been Mr. Thomas' idea, as he explained in a post headlined Extremely literal boss demotes editor to columnist:

In the wake of his apocalyptic predictions for the online-advertising market, Nick Denton, the owner of Valleywag publisher Gawker Media, read my offhand quip about how I would soon be writing Valleywag as a column for Gizmodo or Gawker, whichever will take me" as a brilliant business suggestion, and he's taking me up on the idea.

Mr. Thomas added, "Nick, I was joking, but if you really think I have such keen insight into how to manage your Web properties, why not make me a strategic consultant to Gawker Media instead — and give me a hefty raise while you're at it?"

In early October, Mr. Denton shuffled the deck on his blog network, letting go of 19 employees (including some at Valleywag). At the time, Mr. Denton wrote in a widely leaked memo:

Sites such as Consumerist, whose success has been measured more in traffic and recognition than in revenue, now need to cover their costs. I can't underline enough that this harsh commercial judgment is no reflection whatsoever on the editorial teams that are being cut.

Each of these sites performs a vital function. Consumerist provides an outlet for disgruntled consumers that exists nowhere else on the web; Valleywag has given puffed-up Silicon Valley the prick it's long needed; and Fleshbot manages to be classy and filthy at the same time. The site leads and writers on all of our sites have done exactly what we asked them to: work harder than the competition and grow the audience. It's my commercial judgment that's been at fault.

Gawker Boss Nick Denton, Frequent IM Interview Subject, Explains What He Has Against E-Mail Interviews

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:54:39 -0400

AIM IM with [NICK DENTON]
7:35 PM
[THEMEDIAMOB] May I briefly interview you about something?
[NICK DENTON] sure
[NICK DENTON] well, depending
[THEMEDIAMOB] Did you do the Valleywag post about the NYT submitting questions to Google via e-mail?
[NICK DENTON] yep
[NICK DENTON] well, it came via a tip
[NICK DENTON] but I wrote it up, yes
[THEMEDIAMOB] But you're not that crazy about the face-to-face interview yourself, right?
[NICK DENTON] well, I don't mind IM -- which is how we're speaking now -- and I don't remember asking you to submit your questions!
[THEMEDIAMOB] Isn't IM just sort of a hight-speed way of getting questions pre-submitted? Or is it the routing of the questions through a flack that makes the difference?
7:40 PM
[NICK DENTON] Unfortunately, I don't have the power that Google has.
[NICK DENTON] So I couldn't pre-vet questions, even I wanted!
[NICK DENTON] Anyway, a publisher, moonlighting as a gossip hound, writing about the press relations between two giant companies that also have a complex business relationship -- the conflicts boggle the mind.
[THEMEDIAMOB] And the New York Times press office itself routinely asks for questions in writing.
7:45 PM
[NICK DENTON] and I need to do my last post of the day, and a screengrab of this IM chat seems like an easy win
[NICK DENTON] how meta is that!
[THEMEDIAMOB] Still, I note that you were able to get away with not quite answering my question about the difference between IM and e-mail questions.
[THEMEDIAMOB] I was going to put it on the blog myself.
[NICK DENTON] okay, race you!
[THEMEDIAMOB] You have the technological advantage.

UPDATE: Low-graphics wins! Valleywag posts at 8:03 p.m., 9 minutes after the Media Mob.