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Where to Watch the Fireworks Tonight in Los Angeles County
Too Tipsy? Take a Triple A Tow.
He's Baaaaaack
Some people hate the truth. They look at the scoreboard and they hate what they see. They look at themselves and they hate what they see. They look at others having success and they hate that too.
Last night blogging.la did the right thing and they linked to our post about my resignation from LAist due to my new gig at the LA Times. Because the blogosphere is what it is, a small group of anonymous snarks tried to belittle this historic and wonderful news, and because I am who I am I gave them a retort that some of you have become familiar with.
But the last thing I expected was to see the blogging.la Editor resort to speculation and bold-faced lies based on nothing. Nor did I expect him to ignore my requests to simply ask me how we got our hits that have led us to our amazing ranking on Technorati and our millions of page views.
... I think if you stripped away all the non-LA coverage and celebrity gossip, I wonder where the number of LAists hits would be and where it would be on Technorati. Which isn't to say those aren't respectable numbers, but I don't believe LAist was able to climb the charts by having better LA coverage.Sadly blogging.la doesnt have permalinks on their individual comments, the way LAist does, so you have to scroll down to see the lies. But that's what Dave Markland wrote.- David Markland, blogging.la
The truth of the matter is although Gossip is a big deal on the web, and when done right like Trent does over at PinkisthenewBlog or Defamer does in a very different way, you can get a ton of hits. And even though a lot of the stories happen here in LA, it would be fair game.
But I was never interested in steering this ship that way. I felt that there was plenty of Britney coverage everywhere, so why obsess over her. We did throw her a bone when she shaved off her hair, but we actually had more coverage of her music than her drama. Hell we even saw her show at the House of Blues as the M + M's (so you wouldn't have to.)
LAist doesn't even have a Gossip category and what little gossip coverage that we deliver is usually just simple round-ups posted up by Corey Podell who barely bangs those out once a week - if that. We do have a Celebrity category, and if you look at it, it's far from the gossip that you will find elsewhere, outside of the occasional lists described above.
So go ahead and "strip away" gossip from LAist and our numbers would barely be effected as they account for such a tiny fraction of what we do here.
As for our non-LA coverage. For some reason this has been a major bone of contention for our competitors. Just because they're obsessed with limiting themselves, they go crazy when we allow ourselves to take a road trip, or cover the music industry when it convenes in NY or Austin. I will never apologize for the fact that 95% of what you read in LAist is specifically about LA because I'm pretty sure the number is higher than that. And never did we say that everything here was going to solely be about LA County, nor would I recommend that we ever paint ourselves into such a foolish corner.
Residents of LA travel as much, if not more, than citizens of other major cities. We are the biggest population of tourists to The OC, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Santa Barbara, and to ignore those cities would be ridiculous. For starters.
But since Dave Markland isn't interested in answering his phone, his email, or his chat window, that is clearly active; and since he is unwilling to edit a fucking comment to better reflect the truth, here are 25 of the most popular stories that LAist had in 2007 that blogging.la should have also covered, but didn't, and if they did, we did it better, and were rewarded with way more hits. Scoreboard:
- OC Cop Gets Off After Masturbating on Stripper 2/10
- Spring Undie Run Photo Essay - 3/22
- Ugg! Enough! - 4/26
- Charcoal Opens, Forgets to Make Food - 5/9
- Flickr's New Censorship Program - 5/18
- MTV Movie Awards Photo Essay - 6/3
- When Your Favorite Novel Turns into a Terrible Hollywood Movie - 6/21
- Kwik-E-Mart comes to Burbank - 7/2
- Staircase to Nowhere - 8/4
- Cheapest Valet in LA - 8/4
- Phil Spector Trial Field Trip - 8/9
- Golden Gals Gone Wild - 8/12
- Kayaking in the LA River - 8/14
- Manhattan Beach Six Man Tournament Photo Essay - 8/15
- Beverly Hills SUV Hits Cyclist, Only Cyclist Gets a Ticket 9/4
- Beverly Hills Cops Serves LAist with a Search Warrant Over SUV Incident - 9/10
- MTV VMA Red Carpet Photo Essay - 9/12
- The Larchmont Lizard - 9/22
- Hollywood Bus Driver Hits Cyclist, Only Cyclist Arrested - 9/24
- On-set Interview with Greg Grunberg of "Heroes" - 9/25
- Sheriff Deputies May Have Arrested You Because of Game - 10/4
- Application for the Most Exclusive Bar in LA - 11/8
- Porn Stars Teach UC Irvine Class on Sexuality - 11/13
- 50 Foot Woman Attacks Venice - 11/28
- Sex is Safer in Nevada Brothels than Porn Sets - 11/30
Which is to say nothing of the fact that our best month traffic wise happened when we went to every damn Thai Restaurant in Thai Town (and a few more for extra credit), or our ongoing Neighborhood Project, or our continuing coverage of the WGA strike which certainly stands up to anyone else's.
We have run circles around those who dare consider us peers, and we did it by covering LA better, going to more concerts than anyone, taking better pictures, covering the right stories, marketing ourselves better, and adjusting to the ever-changing nature of the blogosphere better than most which are all the real reasons that we now find ourselves in the upper 1% of the most popular blogs of today. Hell we had 37 posts on Thanksgiving alone including one from Mike freakin Watt.
To allege that our success is due to gossip and stories outside of our bread and butter is proof that you aren't paying attention to the leader and you're desperately grasping at straws. And to refuse to correct your bullshit when you have been proven wrong explains why you aren't anywhere near us in hits, prestige, power, or influence. And the scary thing is, LAist has just begun to blog.
So again, I invite you to set the record straight, since the above cannot be denied, or feel free to continue to act like a scorned jealous adversary who has clearly been left in the dust .
top photo by manmadepants via the LAist Featured Photos, middle photo by LAist Photo Editor Joey Maloney at the WGA strike at Fox, photo of Stephen Box being handcuffed after being hit by a bus by his wife Enci
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The mark of a great writer is an ability to get readers emotionally invested in what they’re reading right? So, this is all this is right? You can’t honestly be this big a douche bag in real life. Can you?? I guess the fact that I can’t tell, is only further proof of your greatness.
Tony, you’re the Vince McMahon of LA blogging.
and I honestly mean that in the nicest way.
Oh my god! Someone else's opinion is different from your own! Chaos!
baby you can have opinions like "we're better than them" or "shes prettier than her"
but if your "opinion" is, "they got their hits because of gossip" and you have zero proof, and infact youve been proven wrong, then you should do the right thing and either show proof or apologize.
its so simple it's ridiculous. our former competitors are jealous, they should be, and now they have to resort to lies that are completely easy to disprove.
but i thank them for showing me that sour grapes are in season.
Drama!!!!
Damn, blogging.la just got pwned.
I didn't put any credence to the rumors or whatever on blogging.la, being totally neutral in the matter (and a new-ish reader to both).
But after reading this super defensive post above, perhaps the people at blogging.la are right.
The comments at blogging.la such as: "He argues incoherently with his readers, is mean and belligerent" and "unprofessional attitude" sound like a pretty accurate description of the above post. When i read them, i didn't know what they were talking about. Then i read the above post, and I say to myself 'aha, this is what they mean'.
Look inward first.
-Ben (I assume this post will get deleted)
i already admitted that i am mean, ben.
now its their turn to admit that they lied about how we got our hits, or show us where they are basing that opinion on. its pretty simple. the two are not mutually exclusive.
however their silence speaks volumes.
tony, were you or were you not at Le Petit Four today (saturday) for lunch with 2 other dudes?
sadly i was not, i was working here on LAist because Zach has the weekend off.
i love french food though, and the last time i went past that restaurant i saw Angeline pulling out in her pink vette, so imagine the food is good.
was it?
Tony, you are leaving anyways. Why start some lame war? I know the whole point of blogging is to publicize your personal feelings and opinions but really what this post does is round up your troups for another round of flaming the competition.
A majority of your readers and theirs don't care either way. It's just the loud ones who will fight to be heard. I just wrote a comment asking David to be mature and professional and I think you need to take the same advise as well.
If you guys want to be treated like respected journalists and a part of the press worry more about the content that is on your pages and how to make it better over some inflammatory comment that no one cares about or will remember tomorrow.
you raise some good questions, and even though I don't work on Sunday i will answer them out of respect.
i am leaving. but i'm not gone yet. and this is not a war. this is, as you said, an inflammatory and totally incorrect lie from a wannabe competitor in regards to this site as a whole. i might be a lame duck editor currently, but my entire career as a blogger, professionally and before i got paid was built on keeping it real and calling bullshit on haters. so no one, especially people who have been reading me for years, should have been surprised that i defended my staff, their accomplishments, or my retort to a totally disgusting comment from someone who knows the truth.
the whole point of blogging isn't to publicize your own personal feelings. thats the point of personal blogging or diary writing. metro blogging is about writing about the city, which Markland would be smart to focus on, as i said in the exclusive interview that i gave him that he shit on.
the majority of our readers dont care about a lot of things that we write about. that doesnt mean we shouldnt post it. this isnt Lowestcommondenominatorist. we write about books, theater, and underground music that lots of our readers probably arent interested in either. i believe that we are successful, in part because we dont pander to what we think the audience will like, instead we write about things we are passionate about. so yes, i bet you on a saturday night if i was really trying to entertain you i would have have done what they accused us of, which is writing about the hilarity of celebrity. instead i went super meta. so for the 35 people who are into inside blogging, this was probably their favorite post of the month.
asking bloggers to be mature and professional is a lost cause. just keep it simple. ask us not to lie, and if we're caught in a lie to be wise enough to correct it.
also we dont want to be treated as respected journalists because we're not journalists. we want to be treated as respected humans. so during a time when a man and his staff should be congratulated, dont shit in the punchbowl because you're jealous and want some attention.
The food is pretty good, but thats as far as it goes, pretty good. The prices are pretty decent too (i expected it to be a lot worse). So all in all it wasnt bad. The french onion soup was my favorite and the penne wasnt too bad either. Everything else (calamari, swordfish, pork tenderloin) was par.
Wow. Are there any non-douchebags currently blogging in Los Angeles?
I think starting fights is pandering to the lowest common denominator. That's like spoon feeding the blog to people and shows contempt for not only your readers but to your staff.
Meh.
The editor doth protest too much.
Nobody cares what 2 LA blogs write about each other except the people at the 2 LA blogs. But when you rant and rave about it in comments sections on both sites, you do give a lot of creedence to the remarks about your "unprofessional attitude" and being "mean and belligerent" to your readers.
i never denied either of those two claims hc, for the record. i just denied that we got our hits via gossip and non-LA stories.