Rafat Ali just wanted to talk. True, the Muslim founder of PaidContent was speaking to Glenn Beck in a "warped auto-pilot" fueled by "years of frustration" at Beck's politics, but when Ali asked the caliphate-fearing conspiracy bear to "come with me to Egypt," he wasn't trying to kidnap him. Honest, Glenn!
In your finally Friday media column: Brian Tierney goes 3-D, an attorney general bravely takes on Twitter, Sarah Ellison and Michael Wolff work the same territory, and Rafat Ali is ready to do...something else.
NYU took free courseware from PaidContent's founder; your outfit freaked out Caroline McCarthy; and Emily Brill called on Google to live out loud, like her. The Twitterati eyed their circumstances warily.
G. Gordon Liddy said something reasonable; Brian Stelter paused his tweeting and Dennis Miller surrounded himself with comic-book fans. The Twitterati were trying strange new experiences.
Money changes everything. Rafat Ali, the founder of PaidContent, ought to be relaxing on the beach after selling his blog business to the Guardian last year. Instead, he's working harder than ever. And getting divorced.
Blockbuster has abandoned advertising TotalAccess, its also-ran DVD-by-mail competitor to Netflix. CEO Jim Keyes would like you to think his company's still a contender, though, and PaidContent's Rafat Ali is happy to oblige in a softball interview. Ali's far-from-knockout closer: "This is a hypothetical one. Would…
Is blogging the future of the media business? If so, it's in a very small way. That's what I gather from the purchase by Guardian Media Group, a British ink-on-dead-trees concern, of PaidContent.org for $30 million or so. It's a satisfying outcome for Rafat Ali, PaidContent's founder; he now has bragging rights to a…
ContentNext, the parent of media technology blog PaidContent, was purchased by the UK's Guardian Media for $30 million, pending the site meeting performance expectations in the coming months. The company will continue to report independently in the meantime under new CEO Nathan Richardson and the editorial direction…
HEARST TOWER, NEW YORK — Far from the sweaty, screaming fans that attended Digg's Brooklyn meetup Wednesday night, the suits of the Alley and Valley gathered last night on the top-most floor of the Hearst Tower for another Founders Club party to celebrate each others' transcendent splendor. All night, giant screens…
It takes a brave man to get in the middle of TechCrunch's bloggin' VC Michael Arrington and PaidContent founding editor Rafat Ali as they duke it out over the future of their micromedia empires. Timesman Saul Hansell is nothing but brave. In a Bits blog post, he quotes Rafat Ali's new hired hand Nathan Richardson…
Confirming early reports, Rafat Ali posted the details of ContentNext Media's new hires, including the promotion of employee number two Staci D. Kramer (pictured, right) to co-editor and EVP and plans to lease space in downtown Manhattan, expanding the company's geographic footprint to the other coast from its…
ContentNext Media, the parent company of blogtrepreneur Rafat Ali's media news site PaidContent.org has named former Dow Jones executive Nathan Richardson as the company's new CEO. He's pictured here in his days as general manager of Yahoo Finance. Most recently, Richardson has been doing volunteer work in Liberia…
What is Michael Arrington smoking? His self-indulgent fantasy: All the bloggers should band together into a "dream team," owning equity in the joint venture. "Someone needs to pony up a big round of financing around an existing blog, or perhaps a new entity, and then start rolling them up into a big fat CNET…
Scoops are important to journalists. But do readers care? Some writers persist in thinking so. I can't remember ever seeing such backbiting over a humdrum funding announcement: Kara Swisher of AllThingsD scooped everyone last Friday with a rumor that Slide, Max Levchin's Web widget maker, was raising a big funding…
PaidContent.org founder Rafat Ali threw an NYC media party last night to celebrate his blog's first investment round. The "guys in nametags making pitches" reminded media pundit Jeff Jarvis of the bashes of the dot-com boom. The Gawker Media overlords were bouncing biz-dev people back and forth like Web 2.0 ping-pong.…
Rising Tide Studios, parent company of Venture Reporter, Digital Coast Reporter and the now-defunct Silicon Alley Reporter has been bought by Wicks Business Information. Rafat Ali writes that Rising Tide Studios head Jason Calacanis "plans to keep the Silicon Alley story alive, with a book: 'I'll be contacting all of…
