God, yeah. I miss that higher-quality version of LifeHacker. There was always fluff but the original incarnation was pretty cool.
I remember when the original founder (Gina Trapani) stepped aside, it sounded to me like she was burnt out on the "post 76786 updates a day, no matter what" business model that they'd found themselves stuck with... although, she was the one at the helm, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The idea of posting about multiple new "life hacks" per freaking day is just so obviously absurd. Life is hackable but not that hackable.
Hell, I wouldn't mind a much slower version of that site. 1-2 thoughtful articles a week. Then maybe 1-2 roundup posts of smaller news items.
I like that name! In the same vein I wish there were a site Slownews with, say, weekly or biweekly summaries & in-depth analyses of what's happening in the world (politics, economics et cetera). Sure, lots of things are happening around the world all the time but most of them are just noise. And even if they're not noise and very relevant to me, it usually takes the media a day or two to go beyond the breaking-news!-I-have-no-idea-what's-happening-and-yet-I-am-reporting-about-it quality level and piece together everything into a coherent analysis. But, by that time, no one is spelling out the essential facts anymore because journalists silently assume you've been following the 24/7 news cycle all along.
When Gina ran it, it was amazing. It was still a good site after she left. But later it became a US-only (whenever I looked at it, most things were only relevant to the US, if at all) almost-spam site, it was really sad.
Wow I’m just coming to the same realization. I used to love it anout a decade ago and suddenly realized I hated going there more and more til I stopped.
Same. They certainly took a big hit in quality after the Gawker lawsuit but even by then I’d stopped reading them on any regular basis.
Then there was Kotaku, their video game blog. It was the only site I ever got a comment ban on. I’d been a commenter for a few years, since the day they added them to the site. Then one day they posted a headline like “Pikmin comes to the DS” (or maybe 3ds I forget.) I click through and it’s basically a write up about someone who made a Pikmin picture/drawing using the handheld (something like that, my memory is vague on the details)
Which was annoying because Kotaku quality was generally not too click bait-ish and I said this in a comment. I got banned. I remember the editor who did it, Brian Crecente.
On the one hand their comments sections were generally non-toxic. On the other hand they had absolutely no tolerance, albeit sporadically applied, to critical opinions. Of course that’s their right, but it also made me wonder what other legitimate conversation they might be banning, and soured me on the site.
Despite this I’ll say Brian Crecente was a pretty good games journalist, and I kno many sites especially at that time were struggling with how to introduce comments without it turning into a waste dump.
Many of Gawker's best writers had already jumped ship to start indie projects by the time they seppuku'd by leaving that Hulk Hogan video up. Splinter News and The Awl were both started by ex-Gawker people.
Original Gawker may have been special but towards the end they had already become a lazy aggregator chasing Buzzfeed's audience.
This is why we need webrings again. It shouldn't take stumbling on a random internet comment by someone privy to the newsroom drama to figure out where the good journalism has ran off to.
I understand journalists need to pay the bills. Still, they are journalists, and they are in this field because they like journalism not because they like money. Often times today, they are freelancing anyhow versus working a regular position. You'd think there would be a little bit more passion projects going on outside of their freelance billpaying work. I know downtime is important too though and its a stressful job.
Thanks for posting this to HN, because I'm bookmarking LH and willing to give it another go.