{"id":913,"date":"2010-07-30T18:43:39","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T23:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/?p=913"},"modified":"2010-07-30T18:43:39","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T23:43:39","slug":"why-i-no-longer-read-gawker-blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/07\/30\/why-i-no-longer-read-gawker-blogs\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 Why I No Longer Read Gawker Blogs [Updated]"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:14309,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/gizmodo.com\\\/5489744\\\/hey-you-rss-readers&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20170830185245\\\/http:\\\/\\\/gizmodo.com:80\\\/5489744\\\/hey-you-rss-readers&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-06 04:42:57&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-22 03:48:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-02 16:56:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-15 03:17:23&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-21 18:10:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-06 16:13:09&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-11 01:41:56&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-18 12:51:30&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-20 20:59:32&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-24 17:18:51&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-04 01:03:31&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-27 13:46:22&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-31 01:34:08&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 05:59:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 05:59:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:14310,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/gizmodo.com\\\/vip.xml&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/gizmodo.com\\\/vip.xml&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><strong>Before you read this post, please note the comment below from Brian Lam who is the Editorial Director for Gizmodo. He writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5489744\/hey-you-rss-readers\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5489744\/hey-you-rss-readers<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>That&#8217;s it. that&#8217;s all he wrote. That post is a link to an article on Gizmodo w\/ a link to their full RSS feed which is: <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/vip.xml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/vip.xml<\/strong><\/a><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>So I&#8217;m corrected. The other aspects of my post are still true but Brian did completely correct me on the partial RSS issue and I&#8217;m apologizing for the drastic complaint.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Two years ago, I unsubscribed to Engadget and started exclusively reading Gizmodo for all of my gadget news. The reason was the Engadget was too dry, lacked great commentary and failed to make me laugh. Gadget news can be pretty dry and Gizmodo did a great job acting a fool and it was entertaining. Oh and I also removed Engadget\u00a0coinciding\u00a0with Ryan Block leaving as his posts were always phenomenal and I didn&#8217;t see a reason to stay after that.<\/p>\n<p>Then CES 2009 or maybe it was 2008 that Gizmodo ran around CES with an IR hacking tool turning off televisions all over the show floor. They were semi or completely banned from CES after that. That was pretty much strike one.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also been an avid reader of Valleywag back when Owen Thomas was the editor and I have to admit to being an avid reader of Fleshbot back when Violet Blue was there. iO9 was interesting when I started getting into video games early this year.<\/p>\n<p>No more.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fleshbot got too fleshy as the articles hit a lower reading level and the talent I loved were &#8220;fired&#8221; in a complete restructure<\/li>\n<li>Valleywag went down hill and they now stalk Mark Zuckerberg and make fun of the wrong people. Owen Thomas left and it just went down hill.<\/li>\n<li>Gawker.com was always honest about what they covered and presented so, even though I don&#8217;t like their content, at least they haven&#8217;t changed what they write about<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s Gizmodo&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It started with CES hijinks and continued with untagged NSFW posts that contained nudity but I click through and two giant exposes breasts are on my\u00a0computer\u00a0monitor then they started reviewing sex toys then iPhone 4 happened.<\/p>\n<p>Gizmodo broke the law, they screwed up and they took chances. They continued public complaining about not being invited to WWDC or to Apple press events and they continue posting false articles about Apple.<\/p>\n<p>Gizmodo is victim of Nick Denton&#8217;s &#8220;pay based on page view&#8221; model where bloggers get paid on how many views they get on posts so Gizmodo talks about Apple negatively, reports falsely and posts NSFW posts containing nudity to increase page views.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been &#8220;through&#8221; with Giz and Valleywag for a while now but then the last straw came:<\/p>\n<p>Every Gawker site started only publishing partial RSS feeds. This was it for me. I consume my entire day&#8217;s news on the iPad on a train with no Internet connection. I have to take 5 minutes every morning, sending every Gizmodo post to Instapaper via NetNewsWire on my Mac then download all of those posts to my iPad and Gawker has put zero effort into making their posts look nice on Instapaper so the news story is buried between links, ad links, login links, register links and more because either they intentionally made it hard for Instapaper to scrape content or they are just being lazy.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that Gawker sites force me to send stuff to Instapaper because of partial RSS feeds (basically feeds that don&#8217;t display the entire text of a story w\/ images) and then make those scraped posts look like crap, it forces me to read Gawker&#8217;s nudity filled, inaccurate, link-bait posts on my computer on company time because I couldn&#8217;t read them on the train because it looked like crap.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>This is why I&#8217;m removing all Gawker sites from my RSS feeds and going back to Engadget. I&#8217;ll give them a go again if they finally decide to hire back the real journalists that were fired, improve their content, switch to full feeds and make Instapaper work.<\/p>\n<p>If they don&#8217;t do that, I&#8217;ll never go back.<\/p>\n<p>Disclosure: I&#8217;m a contract blogger for GigaOM Media. These views are personal and are not weighted by, nor do they reflect the views of my employer. This post would have gone up if I was not working for a competing network. I should haven&#8217;t to say this but it&#8217;s something I gotta disclose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before you read this post, please note the comment below from Brian Lam who is the Editorial Director&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-913","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-rants","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-eJ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6842,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/04\/24\/rants-the-gizmodo-rss-feed-is-broken-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":0},"title":"Rants: The Gizmodo RSS Feed is broken&#8230;again","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In 2010, I posted to this blog that I was going to stop reading Gizmodo because their RSS feed went to excerpts only. It\u2019s a way for publishers to monetize readers who use RSS feeds. Basically, you\u2019re given an excerpt of the article with a read-more link to see the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Rants&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gizmodo RSS Feed Issues","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4156\/34084748502_1573e3132d_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4156\/34084748502_1573e3132d_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4156\/34084748502_1573e3132d_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5313,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2016\/01\/05\/the-end-of-macrumors\/","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":1},"title":"The end of MacRumors","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"January 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A few months ago, I complained to MacRumors editors that their site, originally published by Arn, who used to regularly attend my Macworld parties and was an insanely good guy but even better at sniffing out Apple rumors and verifying them is no longer a rumor site. 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You can\u2019t build a tech site that doesn\u2019t publish 20 times a day. You can\u2019t build a content site that isn\u2019t covered with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4410,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/01\/05\/linked-huge-apple-fan-says-something-critical-about-apple\/","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":3},"title":"Linked: &#8220;Huge Apple Fan Says Something Critical About Apple&#8221;","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"January 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"via Valleywag (No I won\u2019t link to them)\u2026I\u2019m not going to link to this post I simply wanted to share here that absurd click-bait title. It\u2019s a damn shame that Valleywag has stopped sending full-stories through their RSS feed. Gizmodo still does (not sure for how much longer).\u00a0 I\u2019m just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2149,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/04\/07\/overcomplicating-technology\/","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":4},"title":"\u2605 Overcomplicating Technology","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After reading this piece, I sent the following to my father: \"Dad, I'm glad to have picked a career where simplifying processes and navigating acronyms is something I'm good at and can get paid for. Although, it makes me think that only 1% of us actually get this stuff and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2625,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/06\/22\/brian-lam-departs-from-gizmodo\/","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":5},"title":"\u2605 Brian Lam Departs from Gizmodo","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The shortest farewell message I've seen from one of these big-name gadget bloggers. He's a smart guy and I'll miss his writing: After five years at Gizmodo, I'm moving on to play around in the ocean a bit more and figure out what my next adventure is. 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