We had a little party at Wired. We got together with the magazine folks and tore down the Lycos sign that's been hanging outside the Wired News office door since the Conde Nast acquisition.

Then we shattered it with a hammer.

Above: Wired Digital general manager (and Gawker Media alum) Kourosh Karimkhany. Below: Shattered memories of a dark time.

Photos by Michael Calore [Flickr]
Other broken stuff from Lycos: Lycos can kill morale with a coffee mug [Valleywag]
And others: Exclusive leak: Editor says Lycos will shutter Webmonkey [Valleywag]

Gee, what if someone registered to edit the wiki and mentioned Esquire's piece?

Edit This Wired News Story [Wired News]
Wired Wiki [Wired News on Socialtext]
Esquire wikis article on Wikipedia [CNET]

• Wired News catches a writer faking a source: a "space historian" cited in three articles. Of course, if Wired wants a space historian, they should just bring back R. U. Sirius. [Wired News]
• Google co-heads Larry and Sergey reached a settlement with the interior designer of their Boeing 767. The blabbermouth agreed to stop telling the press how embarrassing the whole process was. Now Larry and Sergey can get back to important matters, like arguing over how many hammocks Larry can have in his room. [NY Sun]
• Local blog Starked SF writes a roundup of Silicon Valley's stock options backdating scandal, including a corporate VP who wants his company to fire the guys who fired him. [Starked SF]
• Microsoft discovers that the worst part about being compared to Nazis is paying reparations. [eWeek]
• There's probably a painful metaphor in all this:

  [Supr.c.ilio.us]

Steve had an off day, sure. But all he was announcing was a new desktop (which everyone expected) and a rack-mounted server (who even cares?) — not the same as this winter, when the Apple CEO launched the first Intel-based Apple, or last year, when he pulled out a video iPod. He'll be right as rain when he announces the inevitable iPhone, right?

Maybe Leander's old schtick of questioning the Power of Jobs is just wearing thin, so Leander's blowing what he has left while he looks for one last book deal for his "Cult of ___" series.

Has Steve Jobs Lost His Magic? [Wired News]

Earlier: Dot-com brings free pizza to Googlers, kicked out by chefs who cook free food for Googlers

A Wired News staffer, thankful that Condé Nast has rescued the company from Lycos, sends a hilariously telling schwag shot.

Lycos sent us these nifty mugs in celebration of their 10 year anniversary. This is the shape they were in when our EIC opened the box. They instantly became a metaphor for our life under Lycos.

Earlier: Wired insider: Wired News staff are bedraggled Lost characters

——-Original Message——-
From: [redacted]
To: [redacted]
Subject: The Death (again) of Webmonkey
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 17:00:22 -0700

i could just say "SSAI" but allow me to elaborate. as you may have
heard, Conde Nast (owners of Wired Magazine) have purchased Wired News
and the wired.com domain. here's the news bit:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71366-0.html

now, i'm an employee of wired news, which means that i work on conde
nast properties (wired news) as of this week. webmonkey, being a lycos
property, is off of my desk now. i've asked around about the details,
and i just got word that lycos is mothballing webmonkey. no new
content, no new employees. they say it's "just for now", but
considering that they were never willing to spend a dime to provide me
with any resources for anything relating to site maintenance or
improvement, i can't imagine they'd start doing so now.

chances are, lycos will do a completely new site at the domain and
take all of the old stuff offline. this sounds like a really bad idea,
but they've already done the same with Cocktail, RGB Gallery,
HotWired, Netizen, Suck.com, and Animation Express. so, it's not that
big of a jump to consider that they'll eventually do the same to
Webmonkey. this is the third time webmonkey has "died" (1999, 2004,
2006) and i have a feeling the third time's a charm. one month short
of its tenth birthday!

i advise you all to make PDFs of everything that you've written for
webmonkey. it may still be online in six months, but it just as likely
may not. if you take the article and run it on your site or your blog,
lycos might send you a cease and desist letter. but quite frankly, i
really don't think they have anyone that will be checking. i've been
handling the policing of all of the content thieves for the past
couple of years, and i know that nobody else was doing it. just please
don't say i gave you permission to run your webmonkey article
somewhere... because (for the record) i never said that.

the gravy train has run off the tracks and the conductor has fled into
the woods. if you're currently working on an article, please lift up
your pens and stop writing for Webmonkey right now. the budget is
frozen and there's nobody at lycos who will be able to handle posting
the articles. i hang my head in shame as i write this, because i
really didn't want to have to tell assigned authors that their
assignments won't be running. but those is the breaks, as they say.

please let me know if you have any questions about any of this. also,
i'll still be working at wired news doing web dev news, but we haven't
decided if i'll be reporting on news, editing how-tos, doing software
and book reviews... it's still all up in the air. the blog will live
on, but it probably won't be called Monkey Bites as of august.

if you're interested in writing for wired news, let me know, give me
story ideas. i probably won't be fully folded in to the wired news
process/CMS/etc for a little while yet, but i'll still take pitches.
why not, right?

i wish you all the best.
so, send me questions if you have them! talk to you all soon.

-[redacted]

PS: i apologize for the form letter. please tell all of your friends
and co-workers who are former monkeys about this... emailing every
single author is going to take a really, really long time.

RIP Webmonkey 1996-2006

• As soon as an AOL Joystiq blogger turns off the tape in a normal little interview, Sony exec Phil Harrison (pictured) sneers, "Well those were positive questions." So he's trying to prove Sony's not arrogant — it's just a little bitchy. [Joystiq]
• Amanda Congdon extends her 15 minutes into Hong Kong media. [Daily Hits Blog]
• Conde Nast biz dev guy Kourosh Karimkhany was named general manager of Wired News (now that Conde Nast owns it). Hey, I know that name — he's a proud alum of our big brother Kotaku. Good to see at least someone merited a promotion after the buyout. [Press release]
• Note2Dell: Before naming your blog one2one, check whether one2one.com is a porn site. Because, well, it is. [ZDNet]
• Overheard in a chat room: "Adam Curry invented everything related to podcasting." "Well, he certainly invented the history of podcasting."

For example, Fine wonders why Wired sold its magazine to one company (Condé Nast) and its web site to another (Lycos). A writer of his caliber should know that Wired had no choice but to split its properties, because no media company would take the site, and no dot-com would take the magazine. Condé Nast was so uninterested in the Internet that it let Lycos handle its magazine's web site — a decision everyone later regretted.

He also says that Wired News and Wired Mag shared offices for eight years. Wrong again — the remnants of the once-mighty Wired News just moved across the hall from the Mag a few months back, only to hear endless "You think this is a Holiday Inn?" jokes from the Mag staff.

But Fine's real sin is quoting Condé Nast dealmaker Steve Newhouse (the boss's son), who says the purchase is all about Web 2.0. Bull. Web 2.0 doesn't care about Wired, and to be honest, Wired doesn't really care about Web 2.0 (its editor's Net-centric "Long Tail" book notwithstanding).

Newhouse did not pay $25 million for eight writers at a dying news site. Newhouse paid $25 million to wrest his magazine's web site away from Lycos.

Update: Fine posted a correction. If he sends me his address, I'll mail him a copy of Wired — A Romance.

Steve Newhouse on Wired and Wired News [BusinessWeek]
Earlier: Condé Nast bought Wired News: What that means [Valleywag]

1. Pay their writers a respectable wage. Wired pays $2 per word; WN paid 50 cents. (But an internal e-mail says that for now, that pay rate won't improve.)
2. Stop running so much non-original/non-news content. After all, that's what blogs are for.
3. Let WN writers write long when the subject merits it.
4. Clean up that ugly site. For one, get rid of that stupid ad that takes over the whole page.
5. Hire full-time reporters, not just editors.
6. Publish early and often — this once-a-day crap doesn't cut it.

Earlier: Condé Nast bought Wired News: What that means for Wired

At about 5pm, we got an office wide email asking us to meet up in the main conference room. We got there, and Chris [Anderson, Wired's editor-in-chief] gives us the announcement — it came as a pretty big surprise to most of us.

Chris described it as a deal "eight years in the making" and then opened the floor to questions. One senior ed, half kidding, asked "does this mean we're going to have more work?"

Chris said,"No. We'll run them as separate companies for now, and work on things closer in the future."

After that, we dispersed, and some went to across the hall to meet the new coworkers. It was not unlike the episode of Lost when the tail-end passengers appeared out of the jungle, tired and hungry. Those poor guys have been working on a tough budget for awhile now.

Picture: The Obvious [Splash page]
Earlier: Condé Nast bought Wired News: What that means
Earlier: What Chris Anderson told me before Condé Nast bought Wired News

• The remaining eight writers at Wired News can stop worrying about getting fired. (And Wired ought to grow the team back to its dot-com-boom size — this ragtag remainder has been worked to the bone.)
• Lycos will continue its death spiral. It still owns HotBot and Webmonkey, but these are dead properties. Now Lycos is carried by Tripod and Angelfire — two almost-healthy-but-getting-sicker brands.
• The $25 million price means Condé Nast paid $2-3 million per Wired News employee.
• Condé Nast can finally relaunch Wired Magazine's web site (a Wired News property) in the style of Portfolio, the publisher's upcoming business mag.
• "Internet" is capitalized again.

Earlier: What Wired's editor told me before Condé Nast bought Wired News

Last month, when I reported that Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson maligned Wired's online edition, several readers pointed out that Wired News publishes Wired Magazine's digital edition. Anderson was complaining because he had no control over his own magazine's online presentation.

So I e-mailed Anderson about the issue. On June 27, he replied:

We have an excellent working relationship with WN, probably better than many print/web relationships within a single company. We're working together to improve the site, and I think you'll see the fruits of this labor before the end of the year.

Pretty juicy fruits. Congratulations, Wired — it's good to see the family reunited.

Condé Nast Buys Wired News [Wired News]
Earlier: Editor dooms Wired Magazine's site to fugliness [Valleywag]
Picture: The Obvious [Splash page]

Salon writer Kim Zetter expertly plays down the Wired News piece without outright calling it dog-bites-man. But she gets amusingly close. All references to "the Klein case" below are about the earlier, wussier story.

"Whatever is happening [in the more important Bridgeton facility] with the security you're talking about is a whole lot more closely held than what's going on with the Klein case" in San Francisco, [former NSA officer Russ Tice] said. (The San Francisco room is secured only by a special combination lock, according to the Klein documents.)

After the jump, another Klein-referencing graf from Page 2 follows Rule 1 of the Secondary Scoop: Show why your story's more important than the first guy's.

According to the two former AT&T workers and the Klein documents, the room in the pivotal Bridgeton facility was set up several months before the room in San Francisco. According to the Klein documents, the work order for the San Francisco room came from Bridgeton, suggesting that Bridgeton has a more integral role in operations using the secured rooms.

Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic? [Salon]

Major props to tech outlet Wired News for posting loads of evidence of a secret AT&T spying room. And more props for doing so the same day that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that the government can prosecute journalists for publishing classified info.

But man, the biggest props go for running the story with three large photos of an empty room.

Whistle-Blower's Evidence, Uncut [Wired News]

>To the Newsroom:
>
> Business Day has an opening for a technology reporter in the San
> Francisco bureau. For more details from Larry Ingrassia and Kevin
> McKenna, click on Ahead of The Times.
>
>thanks,
>grace

The tipster, tapped into a whole different gossip stream, says, "Good news for all those WSJ bureau reporters about to be axed!"

After the jump, header info for curious data-miners.

>X-Authentication-Warning: ml1.nytimes.com: majordomo set sender to
>[xxx]@nytimes.com using -f
>X-Sender: [xxx]@smtp-store.nytimes.com
>Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 10:07:23 -0400
>To: [xxx]@nytimes.com
>From: Grace Wong <[xxx]@nytimes.com>
>Subject: Technology Reporter Wanted in Business Day
>X-NYTOriginatingHost: ml1.nytimes.com, 170.149.207.45
>Sender: [xxx]@nytimes.com
>
>
>To the Newsroom:
>
> Business Day has an opening for a technology reporter in the San
> Francisco bureau. For more details from Larry Ingrassia and Kevin
> McKenna, click on Ahead of The Times.
>
>thanks,
>grace
>

The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
212-556-xxxx
917-453-xxxx

First, Wired News and Wired magazine are distinct business entities with independent editorial teams. Opinions and decisions made on the online side of the house do not necessarily reflect those on the print side, and vice versa.

Second, the author and editors of the articles in question left Wired News long ago, taking their political opinions with them. There are a lot of disappointed Gore fans in the world, and not all of them write for the Huffington Post.

Third, just be happy the new Wired cover headline wasn't "Current_ TV sucks."

Rants 'n' Raves: Unsmear Gore Now [Wired News. That title again is Wired News]

No it doesn't.

Look, everyone gets mixed up about this one time or another, but Wired News is not the same as Wired Magazine. The news outlet has been separate from Wired Ventures for eight years now, only sharing a domain (and choice cooperative promos) with its namesake. Even before Lycos bought Wired Digital in 1998, the two outlets never even shared a building, according to long-time journalist Owen Thomas.

Granted, the shared domain could confuse anyone — Wired News is at Wired.com, Wired Magazine at Wired.com/Wired. And back when tech media outlets were trying to go public, Wired's IPO planned to include both ventures. But one would hope Boehlert, a Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of a book on the press's treatment of Bush, would know just a touch more about his subject when going into a public rant. But hey, whatever — he's just a blogger.

Wired Owes Al Gore an Apology [Eric Boehlert on HuffPo]

But, um, how exactly does his video-gaming beat include vomit? He starts today's column:

I recently caught the stomach flu. The first symptom was nausea, and the second symptom was more nausea. I've never had nausea that actually woke me up before...

And surely a tech hook is coming...

Prior to this illness, I hadn't thrown up since I spent the evening with a bottle of Bushmills and a shot glass it invited along more than a decade ago...

Nnnnope. Today's column is all about the technicolor yawn. Is Lore just giving up? Helping Wired News die quickly? Or is he so busy making bile that he can't be bothered to do his job?

Sailing the Sorry Sea of Nausea [Wired News]