How to tip Valleywag: Smart gossip vs. dumb gossip

"She shows up at noon - often w/hangover and then pisses everyone off with snarky arrogance and then leaves early to have drinks back in SF with digerati latte crowd ..." Quick, who is this about? Right, it's about anybody, so nobody cares. Now that Valleywag is down to two people who've already spent 12 years bickering with each other, we're looking for more crowdsourced gossip. From you. As Squirrel Boy said the other day, "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool." Valleywag wants to be your tech gossip brand. You send it in, we make it public without getting you fired. Readers have told me they'd send more stuff if they knew what we wanted. Here's a 3-step guide to what makes a good story:

1. Stick to people and/or companies already famous on the Internet, either as Net celebs or because they're in today's news. Sergey and Larry doing anything is gossip — photos are even better. A bank intern would have to do something really crazy to be news.
2. Tell us something more specific than "She likes the booze." Tell us something unique and entertaining she did while drunk. Something David Duchovny would do on Californication.(Illustration by HowStuffWorks)
   
   
3. When in doubt, hit Send. We'll sort it out. Some readers worry too much that we've already seen it. That's not a problem here. Worse, you might worry we'll cost you your job. That's a valid concern. But we've got over twenty years' total experience at protecting our sources for national publications. I know how not to "burn a source," in newsroom jargon, as reflexively as I know that I began the previous sentence with a conjunction. We know your manager reads us. It's in the server logs. So yeah, trust us. People say Valleywag will stab you in the back. That's a lie. Valleywag will only stab you in the face.

Contact information for this author is not available.

publish on Facebook

Upload an image | Add an image URL ×

Image URL: ×

Youtube URL: ×

Choose a file to upload:

×

Dsmvwl  Admin  Promote to frontpage Approve user Ban user ×

Loading comments ...

Earlier discussions | Other discussions | Show all discussions | Show featured discussions only | Expand all threads Collapse all threads
Start a new discussion