Over the weekend, Pando fired two of its hardest-hitting editorial staffers, David Sirota and Ted Rall, both nationally syndicated veteran journalists. Sirota recently broke a big story about Chris Christie's administration awarding pension contracts to hedge funds, private equity groups, and venture capital firms whose employees donated to the governor's reelection.
Hamish McKenszie, who provided the occasional sign of life in an otherwise algae-clogged editorial pro-corporate dead zone, has left PandoDaily for a PR gig at Tesla Motors, multiple sources tell me (and his LinkedIn confirms). Leaving Pando to join an actual startup—Sarah Lacy must be weeping with pride.
The best publicist in Silicon Valley has been quiet lately, and it's not because she's busy writing conflict disclosures. Rather, PandoDaily editor Sarah Lacy's taken time to come out on the wrong side of history and pen a self-described "rant" against "the mob" saying Twitter should have one single woman on its board.
Something beautiful happened yesterday: an otherwise fractious internet was drawn together in harmony, united in mutual contempt for a new website called Bustle. Bustle is the spawn of asinine media mastermind Bryan Goldberg—creator of the dudebro sports-spam boiler room Bleacher Report—who reached new depths explaining his amazing, unprecedented brainstorm: a website... for girls!
George Packer's thesis in this week's New Yorker is simple and sober: "After decades in which the country has become less and less equal, Silicon Valley is one of the most unequal places in America." Yep. But it's the hideous truth behind the gilded new information economy, and the sloppy apologias are already streaming out.
