Selling News.com to bloggers? No, thanks.

James Nicholson over at Seeking Alpha thinks CNET should sell off its tech news division, News.com, to some other network of “top-tier tech blogs” (Engadget, Tech Crunch, etc. are named), and keep the best writers of the defunct brand to build a better blog network at CNET. Um, yeah, no thanks. That plan makes no sense, not only because the only thing that makes News.com any good is its editors, but (and no offense to all my pals at CNET) the editorial and business models of that division are becoming increasingly deprecated. So yeah, in that regard it does make sense to start thinking about a sale, I suppose — especially considering how much work (read: catching up) Dan Farber’s got to do about right now.

Giant Bomb goes off this summer

Glad to see Gerstmann and some of his fellow Game Spotters got together to start up a new game property, called Giant Bomb. Not that there is any shortage of amazing sites in the space or anything, but it’s pretty clearly the statement of independence disenfranchised Game Spot readers have been looking for in the wake of that editorial scandal.

Schmidt stonewalls reporter that flew cross-country for interview

It’s not too often I directly relate to CNET reporters (they’re often doing different things in different ways than us), but I totally feel for Elinor Mills — the way Eric Schmidt treated her as a member of the press is pretty weak. But worse, I’d say, is that his PR / handlers didn’t make it completely clear ahead of time that this wasn’t a general interview, and that she was expected to stick to only one topic — that day’s announcement, which happened to be the excruciatingly dry news about Google Health. (Typically when I get high level executive interviews anything similar to that I just turn them down. Really, what’s the point?) I don’t know if I’ve ever been stonewalled that bad though, that’s rough — very poor form having her fly all the way out for ten minutes of nothing, Google. I don’t know about anyone else, but I want to see a redux — and from Mountain View or SF, next time.

Hard times for internet biggies

Man, it’s been a rough couple of weeks for Gawker, CNET, Facebook, etc. Editors disgruntled, editors leaving, editors being wrongfully and egregiously fired, readers / users up in arms at these and other offenses and disappointments (as they should be!).

Let me tell you, there’s an unbelievable amount of pressure in the internet big leagues. But let’s be fair — and I’ll try to spare the righteousness / comeuppance is a bitch — would any of these companies be in this spot if they didn’t all do something (or years of somethings) to deserve it?

Final, wandering thought on the Gerstmann scandal (which I’ve been paying very, very close attention to). Although it’s technically impossible to know what happened between he and GameSpot (until someone officially steps forward, which looks unlikely at this point), the lessons are still clear. There is no audience without trust, and there is no trust without credibility and fairness — both things you never, EVER tamper with. As a fellow editor, I’m extremely sorry to witness these events transpire, and my support for Jeff Gerstmann knows no bounds. Still, like McCrackengate before it, I’m somehow really glad this happened, as it reminds everyone — audience included — that standards and quality are still king.

P.S. -Yeah, I’m glossing over a couple of other bad-tech-press-moments here… Apple (duh), Apple, Verizon and Scoble, who else?

CNET CEO Neil Ashe writes off Engadget

Check out this quote from a paidContent interview with CNET CEO Neil Ashe: “While others in the blogging community have anointed themselves as CNET competitors, the reality is that CNET is 20 to 50 times the size of any of those. CNET added more users in a month than the audience Engadget and Gizmodo combined have in total.” I’ll hold back the tub-thumping.

So I met Neil briefly last year shortly after the unfortunate ouster of Shelby Bonnie as CNET CEO; he seems like a very smart, friendly guy — which is probably why I was so surprised to hear he said this stuff. Neil’s either been drinking the Alexa / Comscore / Compete.com kool-aid or is feeling pretty defensive about CNET’s position in the market. Does anyone really think, at this point in the game, that Engadget isn’t competing with CNET on some level or another? Granted, Engadget isn’t really in the reviews game, or in daily TV shows or hipster hook-up social networks or anything else — but the competition isn’t self-anointment, it’s fact. We’re the leader in the consumer electronics news vertical — something CNET has always had huge stake in. Did CNET start its Crave gadget blog because it wasn’t feeling like there was direct competition with powerful alternatives like Engadget, Gizmodo, etc.?

Now, Engadget has about ten million unique readers; Gizmodo, I understand, has something like six or seven mil these days. While I don’t doubt that ten or twenty million uniques isn’t a business-shifting number for all of CNET’s dozens of properties, Neil isn’t exactly comparing apples to apples. Why not compare Crave or News.com to Engadget? Or compare all of AOL’s editorial properties to CNET’s? Maybe that’s because we’re still way ahead of anything anyone else has to offer. Then again, sometimes you never know — Neil, please feel free to prove me wrong!