Gawker: valleywag, john paczkowski

Kara Swisher's hiring criteria revealed

Owen Thomas — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:20:00 EDT

Eyebrows cocked? Smirk at the ready? Then you, sir, are qualified to tack on wry analysis to the day's news at AllThingsD.com. Good thing Peter Kafka, Kara Swisher's latest hire at the Dow Jones-backed tech blog, is a continent away from John Paczkowski, Swisher's incumbent snark machine. Put the two in the same office, and they might just spend all day raising their eyebrows at each other.

Rupert Murdoch spits for 23andMe? This we can't swallow

Owen Thomas — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

CARLSBAD, CA — In her bid to rob her new boss of all remaining dignity, conference organizer Kara Swisher has arranged to have gene-analysis startup 23andMe map aging media mogul Rupert Murdoch's chromosomes at the D6 conference, AllThingsD's John Paczkowski tells us. Come on. At 77, does he have any left? Leave the man's DNA alone, you mean lesbian! Swisher's DNA is also being tested, as is that of Googlers Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. Brin's wife, Anne Wojcicki, is a cofounder of 23andMe; Brin provided the company a loan to get it off the ground. In a real-world DNA experiment, Wojcicki is expecting the couple's first child.

Has Kara Swisher drugged John Paczkowski?

Owen Thomas — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:40:00 EDT

CARLSBAD, CA — One of the best things about AllThingsD.com is John Paczkowski, the site's sardonic tech blogger, whom Kara Swisher cleverly poached from the San Jose Mercury News's Good Morning Silicon Valley blog. At the D6 conference, there has been no sign of John Paczkowski — only an overly sincere reporter impersonating him. There is no speaker the normally acidic Paczkowski can't find something nice to say about. Who is this guy, and what has he done with the real John?

In liveblogging yesterday's universally panned Microsoft presentaion, Paczkowski wrote: "Well this is sweet. A multi-touch piano. Seems very responsive." Today, he penned this paean to Amazon.com's CEO: "Jeff Bezos is among the Internet's true pioneers and visionaries, creating one of the Web's greatest brands and one of its most enduring companies." Kara, I know you have Patches tied up in a closet somewhere in the Four Seasons. Let him free!