Steve: Congrats on the new gig, and condolences on your dog!
As the guy who was in charge of eWEEK.com at the time you
were blogging for us, I have a somewhat different recollection of
events. Sure, Ziff's sites were (and continue to be) monetized
based on inventory to specific subjects. (This focus on page
views continues with renewed intensity under Mike Vizard, who I
also happen to consider a friend -- I don't believe there's been a
revolution in Ziff's online revenue engine since Mike came on
board.)
However, traffic wasn't the major issue with your eWEEK.com
blog, especially since we knew it was a trailblazer for us.
Our big problem with paying you a monthly stipend out of our
shallow free-lance budget was that you weren't actually
writing very much. I'm glad to see that your frequency has
increased dramatically since switching to ZDNet, but at the time,
we were paying you significant money for writing a dwindling
number of blog entries a month. The only issue eWEEK.com had
with "attention" was that yours was obviously waning by the
week.
I wouldn't bother calling you out like this, but I'm personally
offended by the cheap shot at our resident "online pinhead" in
the San Francisco office, who did indeed try to coax you into
producing enough to salvage this gig. I'm sorry you were too
self-absorbed to recognize his efforts to help for what they
were.
Best of luck with your future endeavors,
m.
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