Gawker: the future sucks

Court TV Lays Off Half Its "Online Group"

Choire — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:35:29 EST

We always hear about layoffs in production departments, or foreign bureaus, or "a little bit of everywhere," in the case of MTV—but it's rare these days that you get to see an outfit chop up its web staff. But that's what Court TV is doing right this second—with fellow Time Warner company CNN.com going big on plans for CNN.com/crime, Court TV (soon to be called truTV) no longer needs 16 of the staffers at their website. 15 will remain.

Everyone,
Today we're announcing some significant changes that are part of our ongoing migration of Court TV to truTV. Our plans include a revamp of how - and where - entertainment and trial content is used on the Web.

On Jan. 1, 2008, courttv.com will become truTV.com. We will make truTV.com a popular destination, with an abundance of video content and materials exclusive to the Web. Our archive of stories from crimelibrary.com will be available as well.

Online trial coverage will shift to CNN.com from courttvnews.com. CNN plans to launch a new section of its site, CNN.com/crime. This section will replace CNN.com/law, providing a strong destination for crime news, trial coverage and news from the Justice Department. This section will be managed by CNN.com staffers in Atlanta.

These changes will lead to reductions in our online group. Sixteen positions on Court TV's Web staff will be eliminated. Fifteen staffers will continue to work on the new truTV.com. Of course, we'll work closely with colleagues who are directly impacted to provide whatever professional transition assistance we can.
In addition, we are reducing positions in some other areas - six in operations and two in daytime.

I'd like to thank everyone for their contribution to the success of Court TV, courttv.com and courttvnews.com. We are saddened to let people go, but these changes are a necessary part of a larger strategic plan to make our network stronger.

Marc Juris

General Manager, Court TV/truTV

Twitter Is For Twits

Joshua Stein — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:05:16 EST

In the Times Style section's ongoing exploration of "what's inside the Internets," Noam Cohen examines Twitter, a " relatively new program that allows its mostly young members to post 'miniblogs'—running diaries about the mundane details of their lives, in entries of barely two sentences." Sometimes those mundane details include, "Alright this is it. Parked my car. I wish everyone who ever was nice to me well. See you in the next life." He doesn't follow through but still sad. But most times it includes this, from the same suicidal user, Nick Starr: "planning a Ramen noodle lunch after church" and "At church. Be back in about 2 hours twitter" and also "how did u get IKEA furniture in Florida?"

But beyond answering the bigger questions of life (Ikea: here, btw), Twitter also has the "benefit" of amplifying your drunken text messages to everyone you know and some you don't. Take this cautionary tale from Twitter user Chris Messina:

He described how in April he and his partner, Tara Hunt, "had a big fight after we'd been drinking and then she Twittered that she was leaving me." Because her message went out very late, most of the Twitter users who read the posts were in Australia. Many e-mailed Ms. Hunt to ask what happened. Those messages helped persuade the couple to reconsider.

Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps, and some (the drunken ones) it seems, with Twitter.

Do you know what sounds really exciting? ...

Choire — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:26:55 EDT

Do you know what sounds really exciting? "Futurists Envision the Newspaper in 2020"! But also somehow it is the SINGLE most boring thing we've ever read. If there's anything of interest in it, could you find out? Kthxbai! [WAN]

Elijah Pollack And Mordecai Stein Go To College In The Year 2020

Joshua Stein — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:00:16 EDT

Elijah and I decided to room together at the Dov Charney Washington Square Studiodrome, the new N.Y.U. dorm built where there used to be a park or something. No one understands me like him or him like me. Also, we get a discount on housing costs because the construction is crazy, which is a good thing since we need all the help we can get. My dad Josh and Uncle Neal say that since they became empty-nesters, the writing assignments have slowed to a trickle. And so I must contend with the clamor of jackhammers and the conversations of the rough-necked construction workers. Elijah counsels that one must needs be patient with the proletariat. Though they lack taste, he says, they do have souls. But frankly I find their patois poisonous. How am I to read Baudelaire's divine verse against a background of coarse and vulgar words?

Tonight we're sporting on the town to live low: Off the Wagon, a bar for the people, and then to Smalls, the jazz club. This was Elijah's idea. I'm going to ask to accompany us the cute Ghanaian girl from 5D with whom, during orientation, I have listened to Bob Dylan's early albums and smoked opium. Elijah's dad let him use his ID. (How cool is that?) Howsoever Elijah—who weighs around 70 pounds and suffers from alopecia—can pass for the hirsute obese and lonely 62-year-old Neal is a source of constant amazement to me.

Today was our first day of class. Elijah and I are in Bobst. He's been in the downstairs men's bathroom for so very long! What is he doing down there? No one knows. Anyway, this morning when we walked into Conversations of the West and looked at the syllabus, we both came upon quite a shock. There, under a section of ancillary reading for Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, we saw Sundays with Mordy: A Divorced Father's Lessons from His Prodigal Son by Joshua David Stein and I Kid, I Kid: The Hilarious and Often Embarrassing Contretemps of Elijah Pollack, from the year previous, by Neal Pollack. Mortifying! Will we ever escape our parents?

And it's worse for Elijah, believe you me. That part when Elijah is like to his high school girlfriend, "I'm a virgin," but she thinks he's saying, "I'm a version," and she's like, "Version of what?" And he's like, "Version of sex!" And then Neal, who was in the family room and listening in, clarifies through the speaker system he set up through the house: "He said 'VIRGIN,' like he's never had sex before!" Oh, hilaaarious! And then both Neal and Elijah blogged about it!

Of course I don't come off well in my father's book either. That time when I was 13 and on the bima when I said, "Smegma, Yeast is real" instead of "Shema, Yisroel" and the rabbi got soooo very peeved with me!

Everything about us is interesting!

The only annoying thing about living with Elijah is that his dad calls like five times a day to check in. "Eli, I'm out of stuff to write about. Quick, what are you up to?" But all's well though, because Elijah puts the calls on speaker and they are totally hilarious. Oh wait. One other annoying thing about Elijah is that he refuses to eat at the dining hall. I told him that he should have no qualms. After all, it is catered by Dean and Deluca. (Joel Dean is the Dean of Client Services. We call him Dean Dean!)

But Elijah, despite his populist leanings, says his father raised him as a turophile and he's not about to break bread and spread brie with uncultured co-eds. He'll be so utterly flummoxed when he finds out that I have switched the Azeitao he was keeping in the fridge for Garrotxa. Oh, I really like college!

Previously: My Son Mordecai And I Read Proust