BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
07 Jul 2006
related tags: Rumors | Internet & Web | Video |

In May, I took on News Corporation and beat them.  Actually, they chose to pick a fight with me, but in hindsight, it was fun.  Our next face off is in January 2007, I look forward to it.

Until then, I guess I am not busy enough building up WatchMojo.com, so looks like July might be the time to take on Time Warner.  How come?

Well, here I am in my own world offering Rocketboom’s Amanda Congdon an opportunity to join a rapidly growing company and essentially do anything she wants therein, including setting up our Los Angeles office.  I know this is a long shot, but stranger things have happened, like me, a laymen, roundily beating not one, but two of Rupert Murdoch’s expensive lawyers…

So somewhere in the back of my mind, I realize, it’s not entirely impossible to convince Amanda to join our team.

Lo and behold, I happen to learn that Time Warner’s Netscape’s Jason Calacanis offers Amanda everything from a cubicle in Los Angeles to:

So, my offer to you is do your daily report for Netscape and we’ll pay you whatever you need to get paid AND you can own all of the rights to your video forever (just give us like a six month exclusive window on Netscape). We will set you up with our kick-ass studios, get you an office, and I’ve got a full-time video editor at your disposal (i.e. they can go with you anywhere). Also, we’ll set up a travel budget so you can go cover whatever stories you want.    

Darn big, old media.  All right, looks like it’s Time Warner’s turn to shaft me.  Now, I’ll be the first one to admit, that’s a helluva good offer for a journalist.  But, Amanda is so much more than a journalist.  

Exclusive for six months?  That’s them owning your content my dear.  Six months is an eternity on old or new media.  You know that, Jason knows that, the American people know it.  

I do not know Amanda at all, apart from her three minute daily reports, but I will go out on a limb and assume that what Amanda wants more than anything else is freedom and autonomy, with some stability and balance, and not the other way around. 

Amanda, if you are reading this, at Time Warner, you will get tremendous balance and stability but very little freedom and autonomy.  I would know, I was an employee at News Corporation despite being a “star and key employee” until they bought out my employer.  But, when push comes to shove, in a company of 87,500 employees (as Time Warner does), you will be a number, if that.

But don’t take it from me?  Take it from Mr. Calacanis himself.  Life in a big corporation is good for people who are in the middle of the normal distribution, and you my dear, are a freaking outlier.  You don’t want to be typecast and pigeonholed, and sadly, that’s what comes with the stability that Time Warner brings.

I have nothing but respect for Mr. Calacanis, but Time Warner getting Jason to lead Netscape into emulating Digg is not the best of ideas.  But then again, who am I to disagree?  You blazed a trail at Rocketboom, why follow like a sheep now?

I could not help but notice that your contact on your personal site was the Endeavor agency, the same agency that also has on its client roster Lisa Kudrow and Tina Fey.  As such, there must be some truth to you wanting to pursue acting opportunities.  If that’s the case, do you think that as an employee at Netscape, you would be encouraged to pursue acting?

Unlike Time Warner, admittedly WatchMojo.com doesn’t have Dreamworks’ old office, in fact, we’ve yet to set up in LA altogether, but that means you have all of the upside, doesn’t it? 

Frankly, I still think that this is all a big media hoax concocted by you and Andrew to get more press, but if it’s not, we can offer you a lot more than a Topps 1990 autographed Delino DeShields card.  I do not know what to offer, since I do not know why you left Rocketboom. 

But when the time comes to realize what you want to do next, ask yourself if you want freedom and autonomy or stability and balance.  You can have varying degrees of both, but if my gut is right, then a place like WatchMojo.com can probably offer you a better balance of what you want.  Of course, ’tis not in my or Jason’s place to tell you what that is…

Here, you can pretty much do anything you want to do: continue to anchor the news, develop our citizen journalism platform, and even act in any one of our films, first one being White Lie, which we are casting for now as we speak and which is a cross between Goodwill Hunting and Wall Street. 

But that’s just the beginning, why stop yourself at acting in them?  We’re looking for a few good men and women.  If you are out in LA, well, how about this for an offer: you can build the entire West Coast office and determine strategy for the entire company.

Good luck… with both your future and securing your past.