I'm not sure. The Omni was almost as unsexy as the Gremlin.

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And there are always the DeLorean kinksters.

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Now that's just sick. Sometimes you may have to break down and legislate morality.

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HA. Holy shit, that is just wrong on so many levels.

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That's not the first time I've heard a statment like that.

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Um, "statement".

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How can you possibly self-servingly favor your own higher-traffic, moneymaking employer? Can't you see that this man has totally subjective opinions that conflict with your totally subjective opinions? I have no idea how you sleep at night, Mr. Nolan.

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Well, yes. The upper echelons of those flacks and hacks, as you put it, are a protected class that command relatively high salaries from dying organizations despite no proven ability to generate revenue. I love Gawker because it's an insurgency against the useless upper class of "name" writers who latch on to magazines and parasitically devour them while regurgitating a few out-of-touch columns per month. It also points out the inherent shittiness of PR morons who squat uselessly on the gains of the boom years.

On the other hand, it tends to prove that just about anyone can write well given the platform, so the economics arguments the editors make about the death of newspapers always seem like missing the flaming forest for the dying trees.

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As a concerned acquaintance, I humbly request that you watch the news every now and then. Your Randian worldview ought to have gone down in flames along with the stock market.

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I figured you'd jump to that. I even considered putting in a little comment such as "I am aware of the hypocrisy!"

(And as for revenue-generation, I work for a cost center - my expectation is to reduce costs, which I do well. My business unit is profitable, and vastly more so because of my involvement.)

Words are the product that a publication ultimately sells. Advertising is supported by virtue of the brand-power and readership of a publication. That brand and readership are created and cultivated by the writers on staff, and the ability of their output to get pageviews or induce purchases.

Gawker has proven you don't need names to do that well if you have a strong brand and a quality platform. That's why Nick spend so much money on infrastructure! It's not Randian - it's just, you know, the business model.

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Right, keep going - you're almost there! Why are the companies broke? Because the customers aren't doing what important thing that they used to do?

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