Discussion for article #238797
Well, this sounds like a gentleman who will have no trouble whatsoever finding new work. Who wouldn’t want an employee who turns on you publicly in a New York minute?
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Arkin is pretty much universally hated by Gawker readers (and most of Gawker employees). It seems like Gawker is cleaning house and Arkin is the logical first place to start out with. His psychotic rant shows that.
Sorry, but this whole story seems like the mythical ouroboros snake, swallowing its own tail. Yes, there was some small reason to be interested in an outed corporate exec. But then the story is how Gawker pulled it, and then how Gawker staff reacted to that, and then how Gawker owners reacted to that, etc. By now, only 20 or so people in the world even care.
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Is it me or do journalists nowadays go out of their way to proclaim their own self-importance? Just do good work. Don’t get out a megaphone and shout to the world about how important your work is, how well you do it and how you’re unappreciated. The soapbox is crowded and their work product continues to diminish in value.
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Shame to see this total clusterfuck of an implosion like, what, a week after the staff voted to unionize? And I really can’t think of any other media brouhaha where it’s the staff, not management, that’s come out of it looking like ass, but here we are.
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Point, but I’ll take a million of these jousting little egos over the grotesque parade of ass-kissing, Republican-loving bigfeet journos that afflicted political journalism in the '90s (they’re all still around, of course, just much less important for all the Gawkerses, TPMs, Atriii, etc. out there).
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Arkin, who launched the site’s Phase Zero vertical to cover national security in April 2015, wrote that he was told on Friday to take a buyout as the site relaunches in an attempt to become “20 percent nicer.”
Yup, this one move probably accomplishes that and then some. Way to prove your point dude!
In other news, water is wet.
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Gawker has been “its ilk” for a long time and yet he seemed to be fine with working there.
The New Republic staff came kind of close…
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It’s been a stellar month of those who allege to report the news, BEING the news.
And people ask why we have no faith left in the fourth estate.
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Journalists always think that everyone else will naturally be fascinated by the internal Sturm und Drang in the places they work. I’m trying to decide precisely which part of a rat’s anatomy I don’t give about this.
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Frankly, I’m confused whose side I’m supposed to take, but I think you got it about right. Somebody is doing an awful lot of navel gazing at this point, and I’ll be damned if anyone can truly learn anything about what’s going on there, outside of the already obsessed Gawker watchers…and clearly, I’m not one of them.
William Arkin
I hate to be hyperbolic, but want to understand ISIS or the Tea Party or Occupy or Charleston or Dylan?
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I think I referenced this brouhaha in another article as cheering for a cockroach or a bedbug. Neither choice offers any redeeming quality.
“We are making the world a miserable place. I’m glad I can withdraw and think about it.”
Would he be saying this if he hadn’t been fired, or would he still be an apologist for his right to be part of the predatory hysteria?
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Gawker’s fired national security editor William Arkin set fire to the
news site’s “external shitstorm” and internal dysfunction on his way out
the door in an email posted Monday to the archive site Cryptome.
Is there a version of this in English?
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Wonder if he’s also responsible for some of the fires in CA?
So, Arkin, just to clarify - you were maintaining employment alongside the other Gawker ilk willingly… until they fired you. And only then did you feel compelled to speak out against them.
So, if you hadn’t been fired, you were - what? Just trying to “fight the Man” from the inside? How noble.