Gawker: valleywag, inquisitr

Duncan Riley to stop endorsing candidates first thing tomorrow

Paul Boutin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST

"If you care about the Internet, Obama should have your vote." Just kill me, that seems easier than suffering through another 763-word endorsement for Barack Obama by a former TechCrunch writer who doesn't even live in America. Riley's no idiot. He's just a capitalist. Every four years, tech bloggers realize that political chatter draws far, far more traffic than tech ever will. So they decide to write about politics.

Look, Duncan. I read Boing Boing. I'm fully aware that net neutrality is the defining issue of our time, except for copyright law which is also the defining issue of our time. What I don't need is another overlong blog post endorsing a candidate who locked up the San Francisco/Brooklyn Web 2.0 voting demographic last year. At this point, the only good gossip is if there's a Mission hipster tweeting for John McCain from a table at Ritual Roasters — and I mean doing it 100 percent unironically.

Is Duncan Riley getting the silent treatment from Michael Arrington?

Jackson West — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:40:00 EDT

We figured something was up when former TechCruncher Duncan Riley created his own tech news spinoff, the Inquisitr. We figured there was probably even more backstory when he suddenly became one of our most reliable caption contest commenters (and occassional winner). Now there seems to have been a split between Riley and his old boss Michael Arrington, who in a rather passive-aggressive farewell said "My sincere hope is to have the opportunity to buy that blog some day and bring him right back into the fold." But yesterday, Riley bookmarked "Is Mike Arrington a Dick?" and then wrote an only slightly cryptic message:

Had an email last night from someone who I really respect chewing me out completely due to a business deal with a competitor. To be precise, not just chewing me out, full blown FU I'll never talk to you again.

Sounds like "Bang Bang" Michael's silver banhammer strikes again.(Photo by Sue Waters)