This morning I settled into my usual table at my usual Starbucks café, with my usual venti Américano with way-too-many sugars, fired up my laptop as usual, and attended to my usual morning routine of attending to email correspondence, oversharing on Twitter, and perusing my RSS feeds. It was not long after I had started this last ritual that I realized that something was different; sadly, drastically different.
Well, not “gone”. It is still online, and I suppose one could argue that it is still publishing new content (although certainly not as “fresh” nor as “intelligent” as it was only five days ago), but for all intents and purposes, to a fan like me, it is gone. Of course, as news of Radar magazine’s print version finally folding entirely, and its online version’s subsequent acquisition by AMI broke on Friday, I was not surprised when I realized that the content, the writing, the voices I had become used to reading, were no longer there. I was just…sad.
The evening went up in smoke for party girl Mischa Barton and a male friend at Hollywood’s Bardot on Oct. 23. After Mischa’s friend hand rolled a cigarette, the pair lit up right in the club, passing the butt between them. It sure didn’t SMELL like a Winston! —By Staff
This was the first item I read during my perusal of the new Radar Online’s first morning of news offerings. I do not think it should be surprising that I ceased my exploration rather soon after, considering the content to which I had become accustomed.
This. Is. Hilarious. And also sad. The ads for Proposition 8, the voter initiative in California that’ll undo the state’s gay marriages, are out of control. Take the poor blonde in this ad: “You know as well as anyone I love Richard! He’s one of my best friends! But just because he’s gay doesn’t mean I have to support gay marriage!” Then she can’t even figure out how to convince her boyfriend and she’s all “Just look at the website and you’ll understand because everything on it is true!” —By Choire Sicha
The difference between reading the site’s content last Thursday and reading it today was marked, painful, and…well, again, just sad. Gone were the wit, the candor, the intelligence, with which the content was produced by its previous writers and editors. In their places were simply empty blurbs that one could easily read while waiting in the check-out aisle of a grocery store, i.e., nothing special.
Obviously, I abandoned my Radar Online feed rather quickly, in favor of other, yet still related, material, and stumbled across the reasons why Radar Online was so good, and why, over the past year, I had grown to love having it around in my RSS reader as a daily “must-read”. I stumbled across these reasons in Alex Balk’s (former Executive Editor of Radar Online) elegiac entry in his own Tumblr.
I am intensely proud of a lot of the material we brought to the site. It was an incredible honor to get to give chances to new writers, all of whom carried off vague assignments with tight deadlines as if they were seasoned pros. I’m not going to name names, because I’d for sure leave people out, so I’ll just say that every single one of you special, and it was a real honor to have some part in helping them establish your career. [...] So, finally, to the team at Radaronline.com. You should know that if you’ve enjoyed the site at all during my tenure, it was because of their efforts and the quick way in which they figured out how to manage around me. I was brought in to help make the site more popular and relevant, and, wow, did that ever happen. And it happened because of the incredible team that I was given. —Alex Balk
It was, as Balk wrote, an incredible team. Anyone who knows me well knows that I can be an unapologetic and shameless fan boy at times, particularly when it comes to those writers and journalists whose work I read frequently and wholly respect, so it is not unusual that I would be saddened by such an event in the online media world. But what made Radar Online so special, so enjoyable, was unusual: the collection of these truly intelligent voices, producing engaging, smart, unique content in an online world in which it is so difficult to stand out from the unwashed masses.
But they certainly did.
Not long after I finished reading Balk’s eulogy of Radar Online, I returned to my RSS feed reader, entered my “Manage Subscriptions” control panel, and deleted Radar Online. I was reminded, again, of the first news I read of Radar Online’s demise last Friday, by a writer far more esteemed than myself.
This is a sad day for people who love magazines, and for people who love sharp everyday writing, and for people who love risk-takers and dream-havers. It’s sad because Radar magazine — and its inestimable online arm, RadarOnline — have folded. —Rachel Sklar
Truer words were never written.
Filed under: Editorials, Media, Net Culture, Writing , defining moments, linkage, publishing
OMG, I’m officially off the deep end. Call me.
AV: I know, right? UGH. Calling now.
This was the last straw, for sure. I haven’t even looked at the new site, out of fear. I think I said “I can’t believe Radar closed,” out loud to everyone who would listen that day. Of course, no one knew what I was talking about. I haven’t had a single solitary thought about being a magazine writer since then. I’m thinking about education. La-di-da.
Riese: I wish I had remembered not to visit the new site version but I was either in denial or suffering from a subconscious masochistic desire when I started reading through the posts. And I was the same way in re: saying “I can’t believe Radar closed” to everyone I met that day; it was like I was under one of those small rain clouds that only rain on you ever since I read Sklar’s piece that day.
I dunno. I’m thinking it’s time for me to find a Sugar Daddy and move to Mallorca so I can be a stay-at-home fag. Or something. The other prospects aren’t really looking so hot these days.
[...] Balk and Choire Sicha of Radar Online lost their jobs last Friday, as Radar Magazine folded its print operation and turned its web operation over to the [...]