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1/3/03 I am grudgingly reading Gawker these days. They do a real nice job, and the only issue I have with it is that I like to think I read everything on the web, and every day they consistently prove me wrong by finding some little gem I was unaware of. It's nice and light and elegant, though I don't think they've quite found the voice they're looking for in terms of their parodies, or perhaps they're just too inside for the common folks. Of course it's all the gossipy New York media crap they're looking at, and not everyone is into that, but I sure I am, much to my embarassment. I was talking last night to someone who had written for Inside the same time I was writing for Ironminds, and I don't know, I don't miss being in the middle of that bullshit one bit (though I obviously still like hearing about it from the outside.) It was fun for about three months, and dreadful for the next nine. I saw some despicable things happen, and very, very rarely did I ever hear anyone talk about the craft of writing, let alone journalistic integrity. What I did hear about more often was traffic and hits and general attention-getting, and it sounds like it could have been the same at Inside, to a certain extent, though much less so. Don't get me wrong, I like all the dynamic nature of the web (and Gawker is a good example of that), but you can't make a living off of it, and that's what Ironminds tried to do and it corrupted. It even corrupted me. So here I sit, in my Brooklyn apartment, hiding out from the media world. I like it here. It's quiet. And I'm getting shit done instead of just talking about doing it.
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