New editor at Valleywag

Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal writes on her blog that Owen Thomas of Business 2.0 will leave the Time Inc. magazine to become the lead writer and editor for the Valleywag blog, a must-read for business types in the Silicon Valley.

Swisher wrote, “It’s an interesting move by Gawker Media, the gossipy blog network that is Valleywag’s parent company, and its publisher Nick Denton, to hire a more experienced and essentially mainstream reporter like Thomas, who has deep sources in the Silicon Valley community and is well-respected.

“Denton has actually been writing the blog about the business and often personal foibles of Silicon Valley since November, when he sacked its first editor Nick Douglas. At the time, Gawker execs made it clear that the young and green editor was too inexperienced and not authoritative enough (although Douglas still writes posts regularly for Valleywag).

“But traffic to Valleywag has tripled to 1.5 million monthly page views under Denton, who covered the Valley in the late 1990s for the Financial Times and who was well-described by venture capitalist Fred Wilson as an ‘evil genius.'”

Read more here.