Michael Wolff: Brand, Paradigm, Web, Reinvent, Delivery!

Would-be mogul and Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff is finally going to get on this internet thing, but right-side up this time! Could it be? He thought blogs would be long gone by now. And his talks with "gay megagorilla" Barry Diller and Barry's guy Michael Jackson fell through. But he's forging ahead! Welcome to the beta of his website... Newser! It's Matt Drudge without the fun and the brilliant curation! It's Sploid without the monkeys and paranoia! It's TMZ but completely devoid of celebrities and urgency and puns. It's Yahoo! News without the exclamation point. It's the dullest thing I've seen all day, and I've been staring into a jar of pennies for the last half hour.

The Newsier Newser [Paid Content]

12:20 PM on Thu Aug 2 2007
By Choire
1,148 views
17 comments

Comments

KarenUhOh at 12:27 PM on 08/02/07
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You're pretty gosh darn cute with that machete in your hand.
Solomon Grundy at 12:30 PM on 08/02/07
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"Blacks Hold $60M Offshore, Court Hears." Jigga wha? Jigga who?
LolCait at 12:35 PM on 08/02/07
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There is a monkey! It's an orangutan that plays charades. Funny, that's what I call Jim Belushi.
TedSez at 12:36 PM on 08/02/07
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I'm waiting for a site where all the news stories are acted out with funny cat photos. !NewZCaTzLOL!!!!
LolCait at 12:39 PM on 08/02/07
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@TedSez: Im in ur former Rhodesia, guvernin' disastrously.
if_i_only_had_a_heart at 12:41 PM on 08/02/07
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michael wolff: if you do the opposite of everything he says, you'll be fine
bellatrix at 12:45 PM on 08/02/07
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And he's partnering with Caroline Miller, hardest working dull person in the business, which will assure that it's a snore!
josh speed at 12:46 PM on 08/02/07
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I'm loving the charades-playing orangutan, but I'm also loving the word "scofflaw" in the UK seatbelt article--who's writing this shizz, Christopher Marlowe?!
KarenUhOh at 12:51 PM on 08/02/07
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@LolCait: Im in ur Argentine, blockading ur intestin.
jobbotch at 01:11 PM on 08/02/07
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Wow. Out of their nine current headline items, four are soft news (including one with a monkey!), one is servicey, and one is a completely random bit about the French civil-servant payroll cuts. Exactly how is this different from network news?
IBentMyWookie at 01:37 PM on 08/02/07
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So I'm the only asshole who read that as a "jar of penis"?

Fine.
mrSensitive at 01:41 PM on 08/02/07
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I'll admit I clicked on the Orangutan Plays Charades story. You can never go wrong programming a news aggregator algorithm to flag stories about monkeys.
TheBigDoggy at 01:44 PM on 08/02/07
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I hate Michael Wolff like poison. I hope Wolff and his technicolor, dumbed down Drudge Report-wannabe lottery ticket of a website both die slow, horrific and spectacularly painful deaths.
Gravy Train at 02:54 PM on 08/02/07
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BigWoof: Wouldn't they need to have some life before they could die sad horrid deaths??
TheBigDoggy at 03:45 PM on 08/02/07
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@Marvelous Marv: Fair point. The site is pure crap: I clicked on a "47 minute" old post entitled "White House Departures" and it linked to a July 4 story about Dan Bartlett leaving the West Wing. It sure is "Faster, Smarter News."
From: WWW.FIMOCULOUS.COM: TRACKBACK at 05:26 PM on 08/02/07
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Some weird new thing from Michael Wolff: Newser. [via]
raincoaster at 10:08 PM on 08/02/07
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I think it's just a site scraper with one daring innovation: it subscribes only to RSS feeds available in cursive.