Jim Romenesko

Glad to oblige on sources. Here's a copy of Nick Denton's memo announcing the investment and its relevance to the Hogan litigation: http://jimromenesko.com/2016/01/20/gawker-takes-outside-money-for-the-… And here's a Fortune story with a little more background on the investors: http://fortune.com/2016/01/20/gawker-funding/ On the "endgame" question, it's worth noting that Gawker's new backer is one of the world's 100 richest people, with an estimated $9.8 billion net worth, according to Forbes. Thiel checks in at just $2 billion or so. If both billionaires want to keep battling, this case could rattle around in a lot of different courts for a long time. We may not know yet who ultimately wins/loses.

Buzzfeed has spent the past 6 months standing up a really great investigative team. They hired Mark Schoofs (a Pulitzer winner) from ProPublica as the head of their investigative team (http://jimromenesko.com/2013/10/21/mark-schoofs-leaves-propublica-to-h… ), and recently were joined by 2014's Pulitzer winner for investigative reporting, Chris Hamby (http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/04/8543804/chris-hamb… ), and they've hired several really awesome people to fill out data/developer roles on the investigative team like Jeremy Singer-Vine (http://www.jsvine.com/ ). Buzzfeed appears to be making a real go at the investigative journalism thing and it'll be interesting to see what they do.

Here are the emails in full. Shocking stuff. http://jimromenesko.com/2015/11/03/layoffs-begin-at-national-geographi… "We will evolve. We will create impact. We will change the world." Just fuck off.

I didn't see that anywhere, is there a source? Edit: Found one: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/08/13/aols-tim-armstrong-apologizes-for-f… Edit again: "Tim Armstrong has publicly apologized for the firing of [Abel] since then, but did not offer to reverse the firing or any compensation" source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Armstrong_(executive)

Not the complete transcript, but at least the beginning (I couldn't understand it): http://jimromenesko.com/2014/01/29/hale-global-lays-off-patch-employee…

While Zen Pencils is using older written quotes (it's the theme of the comic), the recent comics documentary 'Stripped' has the honor of the first audio interview with Bill Watterson. He initially declined, but after their interactions with dozens of other cartoonists, word got to Bill that they were "the real deal" and passionate about what they were doing. Rather inspiring. http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/11/reclusive-calvin-and-hobbes-creator…

This is almost verbatim to the spear phishing email that allowed the AP twitter account to be compromised. http://jimromenesko.com/2013/04/23/ap-warned-staffers-just-before-ap-w…

The journalist (Teri Buhl) has a response: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/02/05/teri-buhl-responds-to-techdirts-pos…

I don't know about the specifics of this report, but Marketplace last month had another emotional story turn out to be false. Perhaps that is what prompted Rob? Retraction: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/commentary/returning-veteran… Story about the fabriaction: http://jimromenesko.com/2012/02/02/marketplace-scolded-for-airing-fals… I listen to Marketplace everyday, and I just donated to both groups because it takes a lot of integrity to admit when you're wrong. EDIT: donated to This American Life as well as Marketplace

I actually didn't have a huge problem with McNulty's arc or twist. It was outlandish but it feels organic not just from a character perspective, but from the rift between homicide detectives and the medical examiners office. In Simon's book, "Homicide", there's a chapter focusing on a death that the coroner declines to classify as a homicide. The detective, however, keeps pursuing the case, which is problematic because there are plenty of active homicide cases to spend time on. He eventually cracks the case but it's presented as the detective going above and beyond given the politics/concerns of the department. So a "good guy" detective like McNulty fabricating evidence seems like an extreme twist, but not so much the idea that a good guy detective feels that some homicides aren't given enough attention. And McNulty, by this point in the show, feels like a character who is tired of all this shit but also has seen how he's gotten away with being a self-righteous dick who bucks the bureaucracy (from the very first episode). And the difference in opinion between the medical examiner and the police can be very problematic, since the former's designation is what ultimately makes a case a homicide or not. IMO, the 5th season is the worst because of the newspaper setting. As a journalist, it wasn't particularly compelling to me. I mean, it may be the most realistic depiction of a newspaper on TV, and maybe familiarity breeds contempt, but the core problem is that it's not…

I'm not saying there are no examples. In the one you bring up, though, I recall the piece and ensuing hullaballoo: The original NYT author, Charles Duhigg, basically admired and defended the Forbes writer's job (re taking the story in a different direction; providing more exposure to an audience outside his own; providing a prominent book plug), and then O'Neill backed off his own "link-baity" headline. http://jimromenesko.com/2012/02/21/nyt-reporter-defends-forbes-writer-… In general (though, agreed, ~off-topic here), more can be done w/r/t quality assurance of a distributed content network. Something like "report blogspam" is highly subjective and rife with abuse potential. Slashdot's moderation / meta moderation, in combination with straight up and down votes by the wider community, can be effective. Relying on a "central editorial functions" to handle it all is inefficient and doesn't scale well. This - reputation, rewards, quality (of writers, content, community) - has been an area of interest for me for years. I'm actively working on same currently. I'll put an Ask HN together and see if it gets any traction. (Disclaimer: I work at Forbes and speak here only for myself)