Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) Joins the Washington Post 232
kodiaktau writes "Slashdot founder and long time cat herder Rob Malda joins the Washington Post per an announcement today. According to the press release, he will be the Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large working for WaPo Labs."
Rob has a more detailed description of the job on his blog: "Don Graham is trying to accomplish something that is a bit of a cliche these days: A startup inside an established corporation. A group that can exist at a nexus between newspapers, websites, cable networks, and TV stations and think about the big picture and the future without the normal burdens associated with a business operating at a large scale. ... They are actively iterating and experimenting in many directions, with strong support from the top of the organization. ... Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli assures me that I'll also be working with the newsroom where I can contribute words, ideas, and tools that will improve the experience of the journalists doing work that I personally believe transcends the bottom line."
inmates/asylum, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to make a quip about how he'd be in charge of dupe-checking and ensuring all WaPo blog blurbs are high quality and accurate, but more seriously, this sounds like a cool job, so congrats!
Mr. Taco (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know if any of the above is true but it sounded funny.
Uhhh...meaning? (Score:5, Insightful)
A group that can exist at a nexus between newspapers, websites, cable networks, and TV stations and think about the big picture and the future without the normal burdens associated with a business operating at a large scale...They are actively iterating and experimenting in many directions...
Nexus, iterating, big picture...my head is spinning.
Re:He's going to be chief youth jargonist (Score:5, Insightful)
Could be worse. They could have hired kdawson.
Re:He's going to be chief youth jargonist (Score:5, Insightful)
Please Make It a Journalism Startup (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations on your influential new job. I hope you guide this startup into delivering journalism from the Washington Post. Not just some "new media" buzz factory like most media startups that might even claim to be "journalism", like and the Washington Post online and in print have degenerated into along with their industry.
Journalism is when people tell a true story accurate to the facts and meaning of the events. Just whipping up "a conversation", or featuring "trending memes" isn't journalism.
I hope you've seen enough on Slashdot to recognize what this new venture shouldn't waste it's time on. I hope the Washington Post has brought you on to do better reporting on "stuff that matters", especially interactively.
Good move by the Post (Score:5, Insightful)
They are losing relevance, not to say their ass:
February 11, 2012
(NYT) The newsroom, once with more than 1,000 employees, now stands at less than 640 people....Bureaus in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are gone. There were so many Friday afternoon cake-cutting send-offs for departing employees last summer that editors had to coordinate them so they didn’t overlap.
February 24, 2012
(AP) — The Washington Post Company reported on Friday a 22 percent drop in fourth-quarter net income.
CmdrTaco helped build something worthwhile at Slashdot. He's the kind of talent the Post needs more of if they are not to circle the drain with the rest of the sorry-assed newspaper industry, which the Web is destroying without replacing it with something better.
Re:CmdrTaco is a hip arbiter of tech trends? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah it took all of two years to go from nothing to holding 90% of the market share. What total failure on Apple's part.
Re:CmdrTaco is a hip arbiter of tech trends? (Score:4, Insightful)
And right he was. He can't help it that people care more about what's hip and well marketed.
Visionaries see into the future, not the present. (Score:5, Insightful)
...what CmdrTaco missed was exactly what Apple saw. There was a massive untapped market for user-friendly consumer electronic & computing products. While the smug technoratti were still obsessed with stats & features, Apple saw what people wanted before they did and gave it to them. CmdrTaco's "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." will go down in history (like "Let them eat cake") as emblematic of a group of 'elites' detached from reality.
BTW: In case you haven't noticed, Apple tapped that market and now they have a $500B market cap.
Re:Visionaries see into the future, not the presen (Score:4, Insightful)
...what CmdrTaco missed was exactly what Apple saw. There was a massive untapped market for user-friendly consumer electronic & computing products. While the smug technoratti were still obsessed with stats & features, Apple saw what people wanted before they did and gave it to them. CmdrTaco's "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." will go down in history (like "Let them eat cake") as emblematic of a group of 'elites' detached from reality.
BTW: In case you haven't noticed, Apple tapped that market and now they have a $500B market cap.
Which is why he is now working at a desperate old media low budget boiler room instead of in a plush corner office.
Re:CmdrTaco is a hip arbiter of tech trends? (Score:5, Insightful)
A quarter of an inch is 6.35 mm.
Re:Visionaries see into the future, not the presen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please Make It a Journalism Startup (Score:5, Insightful)
Under CmdrTaco's watch, a grand total of 1 Slashdot post was ever deleted AFAIK (and they made a big shitstorm over it). Despite the often hilarious lack of quality in editing and occasional sensationalism, I think Slashdot has been pretty good on the whole journalistic integrity thing (at least compared to its peers).
Re:What is conservative? (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot used to lean libertarian, but has been pretty much just liberal since, I don't know, at least 2004.
I am not familiar with this strange new definition of "liberal" you are using. Every week the front page of slashdot has as least one story that caters openly to the conservatives and plainly supports their worldview. I cannot recall the last time a story was on the front page that pandered to the liberals instead.
Re:CmdrTaco is a hip arbiter of tech trends? (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) The later versions didn't require Firewire (which still isn't standard on all machines, and was far less so ten years ago)
(2) The first version didn't support Windows and hence required a Mac (in fact, iTunes wasn't available for Windows for another couple of years after the iPod's launch)
(3) Most importantly, by the time it *had* became a mass market success, entry-level models were available for significantly below $400.
In short, he/she wasn't entirely wrong at the time.
Re:CmdrTaco is a hip arbiter of tech trends? (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget the "hip" scroll wheel and user interface then. Was there a competitor at the time the iPod was launched that at least had USB2, so transferring 5GB of music wouldn't take an hour at USB1.1's 12 Mbps? And how big (physically) were those Nomads again?
But sure, it's all marketing. Give at least some credit where it's due.