Wonkette - The Week in Wonkette

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"Kathleen Blanco defeats Bobby Jindal"

Kathleen Blanco defeats Bobby Jindal

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Director's Cut

An IT director's lot is not a happy one

New: Director's Cut SCART

THX-1138: The (Digitally Enhanced)
Director's Cut

Thought for the day:Jurassic Park - the
IT director's cut

Convert analog video to DV with
Director's Cut SCART

Bush Signs Order Bolstering C.I.A.
Director's Power

Parker Bowles Doesn't Want to Be Queen
(AP)

ELLEJAE is naughty car parker

I hope Santa doesn't bring you any presents, ELLEJAE. Link< /a>

"Wonkette"

Wonkette

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Parker Makes Her Mark on Gap Jeans (AP)

Burger Joint at Le Parker Meridian

After ice skating with friends in Central Park the other day, we hit the Burger Joint in Le Parker Meridien hotel for some much needed sustenance. This is one of those classic New York juxtapositions, a burgers-only greasy spoon (dinner: $8) in a midtown four-star hotel (rooms start at $300/night)...kinda like discovering an In-N-Out Burger in a Four Seasons hotel. Duck behind the curtain in the lobby and you'll find good burgers, beer (Sam Adams only), and an eclectic music mix (Bobby McFerrin, Edwin Starr's War, and some opera).

After we ate, JCN inquired at the counter how such an odd arrangement came to be. A hip bar previously occupied the space, but the bartender left and took a bunch of his clientele with him. The space lay fallow for a time while they figured out what to do with it, but renovating the space and building up a new clientele was too daunting for them. Someone had the idea of putting a burger place in there, so they put walls on the space and gave it a try. Judging by the full house in there and the terrific lines at lunchtime on weekdays, it's succeeded pretty well.

Sean Parker kicked out of Plaxo

Although I had some problems with the Plaxo model, I hate hearing stories like this. Sean Parker, the founder and visionary behind Plaxo was kicked out rather rudely by the VCs. I don't know the details, but it sounds bad.

San Jose Mercury

The company sent out an anonymous, terse statement that Parker is ``no longer with Plaxo,'' but called him a ``visionary, creative entrepreneur'' and ended with: ``We thank him for his hard work and wish him well.''

In reality, though, a source said Parker has been locked out, and everyone at the company has been instructed not to talk with Parker, except by way of the company's lawyer, Ray Hickson.

When contacted and asked whether this arrangement is ``normal,'' Hickson said: ``I can't discuss a client personnel matter with newspaper reporters.''

Parker himself issued a terse statement: ``While the company is moving to a new stage of its growth, the management team remains committed to executing my original vision,'' he said. ``The company remains in capable hands.''

As a VC/investor, I've seen my share of visionary CEOs who can't run the company, but we usually try to keep them involved in some way and stay on good terms so we can invest in their next good company. I don't see how you can continue being a VC in the valley being cruel to serial entrepreneurs.

Pierre Omidyar of eBay is probably one of the best examples of knowing when to bring on a real CEO, but staying involved as the founder. I think he and his investors were smart about this.

Ja son Calacanis blogs about this on thesocialsoftwareweblog

Pickup Games, Vol. 1 - Inspector Parker

MATT GALLANT -- I'll be rounding out each day of my guest stint here with a recommendation of a nice game that you don't necessarily need to make room for in your schedule— one that you can play a round of in just a few minutes.

Today's game sharpens and speeds up your logic neurons. It's called Inspector Parker, it's published by Oberon Games, and it'll definitely wake up a brain put to sleep by too much office work.

Football: Eriksson's Parker hint

Parker Says She Takes Care of Broderick
(AP)

wonkette, gawker for DC

wonkette launches

Prince Charles, Camilla Parker Bowles
Wed (AP)

Wonkette - Jenna Bush Gets Down with Her
Own Bad Self

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MTV News hires Wonkette

Wonkette : Archive for Hill

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Wonkette - Advertiser Lovefest!

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Oliver Stone's Twist - Is the director's
latest film soft on Castro? By Ann
Louise Bardach

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Trey Parker and Matt Stone Save
Enterprise

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles
Marry

Daily Download: "Suit of Fire," Parker
and Lily

Wonkette - Duff Says No One Gets It
Harder Than Jenna

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On Wonkette and the rest of Gawker
media...

So Nick Denton's Gawker media has released its latest offspring into the world, and so far (particularly after the enormous success of fleshbot) it doesn't look like much of a contender. Wonkette has been described as Gawker for DC (by Glenn Reynolds, no less), but so far she's evidenced little of the ready wit and weblog-savvy of that rather superior organ's array of editorial talent. Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox writes like a weblog-naif - she's overly fascinated by the speed of the publishing and the novelty of not having an editor (and too involved in the immediacy of her voice over the quality of the material she's referencing) to make the site a really compelling read. I've no doubt all this will change of course - the novelty of writing for a weblog can fade over time. But in the meantime: For God's sake, calm down before you do yourself a mischief!

Gawker media is in my mind a lot at the moment, for a whole range of reasons. First and foremost, I've got a paper that I should be writing for an upcoming conference on e-publishing at the Lo ndon Book Fair. Specifically, I've been thinking about writing about Nick's model of nanopublishing and the way in which these small ventures can create grass-roots, highly-targetted brands - brands which could be floated off into larger ventures, used as branded chunks (syndicated columns perhaps) within larger publications or simply used to colonise the brain-space of people who feel disenfranchised by the large and inhuman face of large-scale media. In particular I want to talk about that alternative model of online publishing - in which large teams of individuals are brought in to run online presences / support sites for commercial magazines or other large media presences at tremendous expense - expense which evidently might simply not be necessary.

But of course the problem with Nick's nano-publishing model (and he problem with my proposed paean to it) is that it doesn't really seem to make anyone that much money and that perhaps as a direct consequence, no one else seems to want to do it. I mean, short of business ignorance (which we shouldn't dismiss as a likely proposition) what other reasons could there be for the lack of competition to Gawker Media? I mean, it's established a model that's far from hard to replicate if you have a little money lying around and a certain amount of savvy. And it's even generated a core concept (local savvy correspondents filtering and condensing the regional media down to thick paste that is as much about myth-making the place as it is purporting to give back-stage access into what's really going on) that's eminently replicable to every decent-sized on the planet. I mean, we can all imagine a London equivalent, a Tokyo equivalent or a Sydney equivalent - we can all see the possibilities in a version of this model for Rome, Paris, Edinburgh and Barcelona. Which leads me to wonder - where are they?

I have my theories, of course. Do you have any?

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Wonkette and the Ethics of Online
Journalism

Wonkette - Kathleen Parker: Director's Cut