Rainbow Media And Gothamist: Over Before They Started
Rainbow Media’s proposed acquisition of Gothamist, a network of twelve local blogs all ending in “ist” except for “Seattlest,” has fallen through and it seems, if certain rumors hold true, that Gothamist founder Jake Dobkin‘s lack of filter via various online social networks might be to blame.
Dobkin once entered into a battle with the New York Times for reasons that are best known to him. Perhaps he just wanted an excuse to use the word “teat:”
My feeling is you only get to congratulate yourself if you produce a great product and make money doing it — you don’t get any points for doing just the first half. And that doesn’t just go for you guys — I don’t think any magazine or newspaper that supports itself by sucking on the teat of some old rich guy (or his heirs!) should be giving anyone else advice.
Specifically in local, I don’t think the Times has had an original idea in years. It’s got a metro staff of what, 60 reporters, and look at all this innovation: Cityroom, which is a fairly lazy and sleep-inducing ripoff of Gothamist, and The Local, a recently closed ripoff of Brownstoner.
Rainbow Media head James Dolan, you may recall, is not exactly a fan of people accusing other people of placing yet other people’s genitalia in or around their mouths.
The Village Voice also points out that, after the Times saw it fit to overlook Dobkin’s online rant and invest some ad dollars in Gothamist (albeit in the most passive aggressive manner they could possibly manage — by putting up a gigantic banner ad that made it look at if Gothamist was, in fact, a Times blog), Dobkin took to Twitter (in a post that has since, it seems, been removed) to share that he felt a Times profile on web entrepreneur and possible Bond villain Lockhart Steele was… difficult to swallow, writing that he “didn’t realize that the Times was allowed to feature blowjobs this explicit!”
Which, really. Might have been the last straw for Dolan. Sucks to be Dobkin right now, we suppose.
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