GQ acquired Pitchfork. Rolling Stone was run by assholes. Consequence of Sound was just the worst kind of clickbait for years, but they eventually got their shit together. I kinda stopped paying attention to them so I don't have anything good or bad to say.
@sweeterthan - you said we ought to talk about doing a thing.

What's that thing look like, to you?

Is it a variation of "News & Articles" that I can spin off from the Hotline's codebase, with a "Reviews" section too? Reviews of releases, of concerts?

Sketch out a skeleton of the idea here.

Right off the bat, I'll tell you that if it's something I end up kicking off, the initial expectation I'm setting is that all involvement is volunteer-based. At the risk of sounding like a conservative chud: I recognize that's not a great stance in an era where the federal minimum wage hasn't been raised in a decade and a half, and cost of living is outrageous. Even if this does somehow become a revenue generating enterprise, I don't really have any expectation that it will be anyone's full-time job. That's not the point right now. I think that the history of how I've run my internet things makes it clear that I do these things to scratch an itch, not to get anyone rich.

If this is something we do, that attitude might ultimately be what keeps this stuck in first gear, and maybe it never *really* takes off.

Also be cognizant that participating in something like this is absolutely going to open you up to the most petty bullshit from people who aren't doing what you do. Probably in this thread alone, you'll get facepalms from people who already don't like how you do things or what you have to say. You'll have to rise above that, while also somehow allowing room for accepting criticism of your own process. It's quite the thing to sign up for (if we do this).

It's also something that's going to take a few months to stand up, and will likely be thankless for at least a year or two. If you want it to get bigger and better, it's going to take a group effort. At this stage, I see my role as sort of standing up the tech and helping get things going, probably being some kind of director or editor-in-chief for at least a little bit, but I've got a lot going on and I'm not going to be able to check in every day.

I've given thought to this at least two other times in the past, at times when I definitely had more sort of 'social capital' that would have kickstarted things better, but I knew I didn't have the space to commit to something like that. Having recently revamped ye olde NIN Hotline in a way I feel better about, I'm willing to give this more thought, particularly since NIN News is pretty sparse.

Who's in?