Gawker: valleywag, pc magazine

Pot Behind PC World Editor's Slaying, Accomplice Confirms

Ryan Tate — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:11:57 EDT

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Courtroom testimony appears to have solved the riddle of why tech journalist Rex Farrance was killed in a seemingly bizarre 2007 slaying: The thieves knew about all the pot stashed in his San Francisco Bay Area home.

Farrance's son Sterling, who had a medical prescription for the drug, insists he only had about 15 pot plants growing the attic; police, who long suspected narco-violence, have said it was more like 100 plants, and several pounds of processed bud.

Either way, word of the stash got out. Maybe Sterling, then 19, bragged to one too many friends. Accomplice Cleothius Termaine Amos, who turned state's witness in a plea deal, said he and three others went to the Farrance house looking for the pot:, only to find two bewildered parents.

After the couple couldn't cough up any money, the robbers pistol-whipped the woman and shot the man:

Amos said his group talked about the shooting afterward in the getaway car.

"Montrell was telling Little Man he was stupid, and why'd he have to shoot," Amos said. "And Little Man said he only shot him in the leg. And they were arguing back and forth and I was calling Little Man stupid, too."

The men had obtained a pound of marijuana from the house, which they sold for $1,800.

PC Magazine kills print edition

Paul Boutin — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:59:10 EST

Why, God, why? PC Magazine was such a nice, safe publication. It never hurt anyone. It sort of kept to itself around the neighborhood, but it seemed perfectly normal. Not at all like those rowdies at Infoworld. Ziff-Davis, the publisher, has already gone through bankruptcy. Wasn't that enough ? In a word: No. Seventy percent of PC Mag's revenue now comes from the Internet, according to Ziff's CEO. Valleywag alum Nicholas Carlson has a tidy little reblog of the whole situation.

Shuttered Muxtape included on PC Magazine's list of top "undiscovered" sites

Jackson West — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:20:00 EDT

PC Magazine includes Muxtape in its latest listicle, the "Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites," even though the RIAA's already "discovered" it, triggering a shutdown. Poor Kyle Monson, the writer of the piece — those cushy, weeks-long magazine lead times from when a piece is submitted to when it's published do have their downsides.

Maybe these Top 100 Blog lists are meaningful after all

Paul Boutin — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:48:24 EDT

Ten of PC Magazine's 100 favorite blogs are Gawker Media sites. Backscratching is right out as an explanation. As far as we know, the magazine's ~~South San Francisco~~ Midtown-based staffers have never even met Gawker dark lord Nick Denton, nor anyone from Consumerist, Deadspin, Defamer, Gawker, Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, Lifehacker, Wonkette or Valleywag. Just as surprising: None of the usual tech A-listers — Winer, Scoble, Calacanis — made the cut, except for media pundit Jeff Jarvis. Gawker staffers aren't that stoked about it. We're far more caught up in this week's cover story about the company in New York magazine, an elite Manhattan publication largely unheard of here in the Valley. You'll never make it through New York's 6,000-word opus, so here's the takeaway: Our core value is outsider rage, but "Gawker blogs maintain standards of stratospherically higher writing quality than other Websites." Also, we reportedly have really great sex and drugs.

Jason Young replaces Robert Callahan as CEO...

Megan McCarthy — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:43:00 EDT

Jason Young replaces Robert Callahan as CEO of Ziff Davis, the parent company of PC Magazine. [Business Wire]

Was Jim Louderback pushed? Or did he jump?

Owen Thomas — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:18:51 EDT

Luckily, former PC Magazine editor Jim Louderback won't have to depend on renting out his Vermont vacation home for income. Revision3, the online-video startup founded by Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, has hired him as its new CEO, a coup Adelson was bragging about at the recent Foo Camp. But we're not buying the spin Louderback's allies are peddling to NewTeeVee — that he jumped to Revision3 rather than getting pushed out of his plush perch at PC Magazine. Here's the evidence for both theories — and your chance to vote in a poll.Here's why: A source estimates his salary at $300K or higher, a big expense for a magazine losing ad pages left and right, and notes that he was commuting from the Bay Area to New York City for the job. That suggests he was pushed. On the other hand, online video is a hot market right now, and a San Francisco job is understandably more appealing — which suggests Louderback jumped. Update: For the record, Jim Louderback emails Valleywag, saying he jumped:

While I'm excited to see my photo in Valleywag — I'm a huge fan — alas, I didn't get fired. After 14 years there (give or take), I would have walked away with a sweet severance package. They did everything they could to get me to stay. Nope, it's actually a much more boring story about moving from one fun job ( that was mostly in New York) to another that's closer to home - and that's a more exciting challenge. Sort of like what you (Owen) did, actually. But I do appreciate the plug for my rental house in Vermont! Every link helps... It's still available for a few weeks this fall if you're interested. Jim PS, on the numbers for PCMag advertising - which I had very little to do with as the head of edit - you might want to see how the other magazines (PC World, Computer Shopper, Maximum PC) have done in that same time frame. PCMag was still the leader in market share when I left yesterday, as it has been the entire time I've been at Ziff Davis (since 1991). If PC Mag dropped, the others dropped even more.

So which is it? You decide.

PC Magazine fires its editor

Owen Thomas — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:15:48 EDT

Jim Louderback is out as editor-in-chief of PC Magazine; Lance Ulanoff, the magazine's reviews editor, is now in charge. Why the change? The cause seems obvious. Louderback, who helped launch the TechTV cable channel and launched Internet TV shows for PC publisher Ziff-Davis, but his multimedia experience wasn't enough to save his job — or PC's still-lucrative print business. Louderback, installed a year ago, presided over a disastrous 34 percent drop in advertising pages, according to Publisher's Information Bureau data. As for Ulanoff's hire, perhaps the reviews czar was deemed friendlier to the magazine's advertisers — though making PC's softball tech coverage softer yet seems like a challenge. Louderback, meanwhile, whose new job has yet to be announced, may have to live off the $900 week rental income from his vacation home in Vermont for a while.

Dvorak shoots for another bait-and-switch

Nick Douglas — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:51:02 EDT

PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak follows up the "How I bait Mac users" video (which whipped bloggers into a frenzy) with an "I'm sorry, I'm flabbergasted" column. Now Dvorak says that his baiting trick only worked three times in his career — and that he's amazed how many people blew up at this video.

For those of you who just walked into the room, step 1 of Dvorak's self-proclaimed formula is, well, to whip bloggers into a frenzy. Step 2 is to "act flabbergasted." Now all that's left is step 3: reverse the position and apologize.

Clever, really, if a little sad that Dvorak's own formula is the seed for his latest string of half-assed columns. This time, he says, "There will be no followup to this column and no apologies." Really, Dvorak, you think you can resist squeezing a final column from this affair? The lede is pre-written: "I didn't want to do this, but the public outcry forced me to reconsider my own outline of my method."

Dvorak Reveals Old Formula, Panic Ensues [PC Magazine]