I totally don’t get it. He argues incoherently with his readers, is mean and belligerent and hasn’t done all that much with LAist. I know I’m not the only one perplexed by this decision.

I’m glad somebody said it.

Ditto/Amen to you UGH. And he seems to have a special loathing for westsiders for no apparent reason…Can’t wait to read LAist without him.

Tony does his thing his way and of course that’s bound to rub and wrankle. PersonallyI’m not only thrilled for him, but excited at the potential for the Times to utilize his strengths and energies to pull itself further out of the tower and down to the street.

Ditto/Amen to you Will Campbell!

ahahahaha god i love the ignorant anonymous haters.

hasnt done much with LAist?

better look at the scoreboard dummy.

as for criticizing the wessssside “for no apparent reason” – if theres one thing you can say about me its that i will give you my reasons, and then some.

so why not go back and read the reasons i gave, and then whine about them. or continue to pretend that the wesssside is beyond reproach.

and as always, thanks for the props Will.

Good riddance. LAist is a great blog, and will do even better without Pierce’s mean attacks on readers, commenters, and anybody who dares not share his opinions.

Scoreboard, is that what it’s all about? I think TMZ wins on that front and frankly, it’s nothing to be proud of.
The problem with LAist is best represented by the comments above, there’s too much of Tony’s personal life and hurt feelings running through the blog. Los Angeles is a big city, we don’t need more egomaniacs controlling things around here. I’m very disappointed by this decision, the LA Times is already headed nowhere fast.

scoreboard is part of what its about. particularly when trying to soberly judge success.

unlike TMZ, LAist got our hits not by stalking celebs, taking pics up their skirts, or feeding off the britney/paris/lindsay lowest common denominator.

we actually covered LA. and did it better than everyone else.

part of covering it is having opinions occasionally and backing it up with facts. clearly facts and stats are things you are unfamiliar with. and obvs you hate it when people challenge you after you challenge them. but thats your personal problems.

btw our comments are virtually troll-free because of my doing. and no i didnt ban many people or delete many comments. i just out-snarked them and they slithered off to annoy other blogs.

keep hatin! see if it works for you!

When I asked if Gothamist was covering LA music as much as LAist was covering NYC music, Tony deleted my message and then sent me a personal “deleted your comment. have a nice day” email. Those are the kind of “troll” messages we’re talking about.

But really it was Tony’s ad hominem attacks which finally caused me to tune out. It’ll be interesting to see what becomes of both the LAT and LAist. Personally, I think Tony’s move will be good for both.

I’m glad Tony got hired by the Times, just so he can be eventually fired by them. He has as much emotional maturity and wit as a junior high school student.

No, I take that back. There are a few intelligent, mature junior high school students out there.

Well, I have more on Tony in an upcoming interview, but 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.

That said, LAist’s local coverage has been getting better and better, on some days being fucking brilliant.

But to say Tony did nothing for LAist is an empty claim.

Whether or not how he handles people who disagree with him or his authors, thats a valid point of argument that I’m sure he’d love to argue with anyone.

db, im pretty sure that wasnt the only completely lame and off-topic thing that you had written on our glorious blog.

and im pretty sure i told you that since LA is the music capital of the world that to only cover bands who are “local” is foolish.

and i bet i told you a few more other things too.

but thanks for telling the 8 people who read this that i did infact send you an email letting you know what i did. because i do play fair.

Maybe Laist will finally source its tips. Oh, happy day…

Wow.

8 people read this blog? When did the stats double?

Somebody let me know when Tony Pierce’s replacement takes over at LAist…just so I can finally start readng LAist again.

Markland you are lying and you know it. So delete the lies or back them up with your sources.

I haven’t been here in a while, I expected some of the anonymous haters, but the blatant lies when the source is right here to correct you – if only you would ask – is new to me at this URL.

This is a weekend that should be a celebration for the LA blogosphere and bloggers everywhere. I can understand your jealousy. But to refuse to correct a blatant lie is worse than all the bitching that the kids here have said about me.

I am a prick, I delete .01% of our comments, true. Guilty. But I don’t lie in comments or on LAist. and I correct mistakes when theyre brought to my attention.

If you want to lie, tell Sean to put a disclaimer on this shit.

“nothing in here is true” has worked for a certain LA blog.

you might consider it.

Tony, making a comment about music coverage in a post about music is only off-topic in your mind. And my comment wasn’t about non-LA bands, but about LAist spending several days covering a New York music festival, taking place in New York!! I didn’t even dis it. I only asked if Gothamist did the same job covering L.A. music festivals. That’s a question still left unanswered.

Whatever, good luck in MSM. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Tony really is the worst thing about LAist… I’ll be glad to see him go. I don’t even need to see his name on a post to be able to recognize his particular style of bullshit. Luckily he won’t actually be blogging for LAT, they are smart enough to leave that to professionals.

I’m glad that there are others who have been turned off by him and it isn’t just me. I also love that he has come out in full force to remind us of all the reasons why his work is so grating.

“This is a weekend that should be a celebration for the LA blogosphere and bloggers everywhere.”

I’m laughing so hard right now, I am literally crying.

Talking about Gothamists’ editorial decisions in LAist is off topic when have a guy who traveled across country to cover the biggest college music fest on the east coast.

And yes, in context with your other snarks, it did come across as negative. Positive would have been “wow, look at LAist go. Look at them cover CMJ the way they covered SXSW. They literally go out of their way to cover the music industry.”

So I apologize if I took your compliment the wrong way.

and yes Shay, of course this is big news for the LA blogosphere. For a local blogger to be put in the position to run All of the blogs of one of the biggest newspapers in the world, is not only a compliment to bloggers, but the LA blogosphere.

since youre obviously not part of the blogosphere, your ignorance will be forgiven. this time.

I’m a fan and loyal reader of both blogging.la and LAist. Hilariously enough, both sites compliment each other fairly well. The only issue I’ve had with LAist is Tony’s surprisingly unprofessional attitude. While I respect and enjoy his work; his innate ability to be smug and condescending, reflected badly on the site. The naïve kid in me, would like to believe a positive change in him is inevitable, because that shit won’t fly in the real world. Sadly, we all know that’s not how the world works. He’ll probably be running that place, by this time next year. Congrats Tony. You can’t get by, being a dick; without having the chops to back it up. I look forward to seeing, what you make of the blogging section at the LA Times.

Wow, I’m sorry… I didn’t realize the magnitude of this career move. An LA blogger gets a job managing blogs for an LA newspaper!!!

As for the LA Times being one of the biggest newspapers in the world, why don’t you check your facts? The LA Times’ circulation may be 4th in the U.S., but it is only about half of that of the #2 paper (WSJ). Plus, the U.S. is hardly the world and the LA Times’ doesn’t even make the top 50 worldwide.

Not that circulation has anything to do with quality anyway; the second tier papers in New York have circulations just below those of the LA Times and I wouldn’t run around bragging about the earthshattering implications of working for them, either.

Get over yourself.

apology accepted!

carry on.

Looks like someone’s getting their panties in a bundle: http://laist.com/2007/12/01/gossip_my_ass.php
My favorite line, directed to b.la: “you aren’t anywhere near us in hits, prestige, power, or influence.” I cry now.

Yeah, seriously. I had no idea what anyone was talking about in this post, until i read that defensive post at laist.
It’s almost like he’s trying to prove his detractors right.

I think you all take this thing too personal. It’s just a couple of blogs. I tend to visit both laist and blogging.la because one usually has something interesting that the other hadn’t covered.

What really is lame is if you are an employee, let’s say an editor, of either blog, and you try to start up some sort of flame war against the “competition”. Seriously David Markland, you need to be the mature one here and act professionally. Your comment above doesn’t encourage non-biased readers like myself to stick around. Believe it or not, most of your readers just come to read news about LA, not some stupid playground fight.

What amazes me is the “offense” that started this thrash on Tony’s part occurs in the same very same comment where Markland says:

That said, LAist’s local coverage has been getting better and better, on some days being fucking brilliant. But to say Tony did nothing for LAist is an empty claim.

Perspective, anyone?

I reiterate:

Wow.

How the crap is it that Eater and Curbed are more “corporate” than LAist? Shall we compare Curbed’s rate sheet to Gothamist LLC’s rate sheet? Is Eater/Curbed more “corporate” because they actually pay their writers, instead of riding their coattails to a paying gig in print media?

Make that their “volunteer” a.k.a. unpaid coattails…

I followed this link from an LAist post in which the writer pissed and moaned and presented their open wounds to us so that we probably would venture over here in his defense.

All I have to say to Tony is, “Welcome to the Internets,” dude.

this is the most interesting post to happen on blogging la in months… time to get rid of the owl family sightings and get to work on actual interesting stories about la. it’s about time someone said it.

Speaking of which, where is our owl watch guy? Someone get on that, stat!

I don’t know what you all are talking about. Look at the maturity in which Tony has presented himself here (not to mention his spectacular grammar skills) and tell me he’s not well suited to edit every blog in the entire world!

I can’t believe how defensive and hostile Tony comes across here, as if to prove his detractors right. He has to respond to every single criticism with snarky sarcasm — what a thin skin, and huge ego: the Times job is a victory for the entire L A blogosphere? Maybe for the entire blogging universe? Sounds more like a certain loose cannon gadfly who blogs for another site and shows up to waste time at city hall, rather than someone you could put in charge of anything.

Will your duties there include censoring really offensive comments, like DB asking about how you review bands? Where the Times comment submission says “your comment is being reviewed,” will that e by you? Lord help us if it is. But when that happens, the powers that be there will call you on the carpet — they can’t have read your blogs, just seen the stats for LAist.

Your crazy, magpie persona has paid off there — no telling what people will post, and no limits. (The nude pix of the guy band a couple of weeks ago really went to to the limit — but it was cool because the guys were so un-hot, it raised implied questions about how we depict nudity and sexuality on stage and in public, all that stuff. Something you couldn’t articulate to save your life, but you have an eye for pushing the boundaries. Yes, that is a compliment, since you openly fish for them.)

That boundary-pushing is exactly what the MSN like Times doesn’t want, nor your snarky comments to posters and censorship — they’re hiring you to increase not blow off blog readers. So what works for an edgy blog is precisely death to MSM blogs. Keep your persona out of it if you don’t want to blow off their readers. Rudeness is an acquired taste among the “too cool for the wesssside because I can’t afford it anyway” crowd.

What we’ve got here… is…

Lets not lose the compass folks. ‘He said this’, ‘you can’t prove that’, ‘their attitude sucks’, etc etc…

This back and forth between ‘editors’ (and readers/lurkers), its sort of the primary reason that blogging has become such a powerful new paradigm of popular culture… the real-time writing and reading of “news”, er, rather
STUFF. Factual, gossip, attitude-laced, relevant or not, this is the freaking game kid.

5 years ago, a guy gets a new position at LAT, and nobody in the city gives a flying fuck… and if they DID, they would AT MOST email or post a letter to the Ed. and chances are it never gets seen.

So lets revel in whats happening here. If it wasn’t for this wideopen forum, we’d all be reading Parade on Sundays and being perma-bummed with Ask Marilyn.

You scrappers are trying to compartmentalize the fucking internet… where everybody has a say, nobody’s boss, bullshit is everywhere, and the good stuff usually floats to the top. Shut up and stop bitching, the good AND bad of the internet is what makes it so damned cool.

Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it… well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.

Were someone to make the inept, poorly punctuated comments that our little tit Tony put on this blog, tony would have deleted the comments (as he has done with a few hundred comments that show him to be the incompetent jerk he is).

That the L.A. Times would allow such a moron to oversee their failing new media (when did they ever have a pay wall like the New York Times?) is questionable in many ways.
I usta bitch about Robert Hillburn and his over-40 perspective on pop music. (That was when I lived by my own means via a 15-year of a magazine I published; unlike Tony I did not have to be somebody’s bitch because I owned my own vehicle.) I thought it could not get worse, but Tony trying to be 20-something when he never had a clue is sure to be a travesty. I doubt the dim bastard has not a clue as to what Flipside, Ben Is Dead, Bomp! Records, Dangerhouse, et al was, how it affected L.A. and the world with respect to music and all that.

Spice Girls at Staples Center? I am sure Tony was there telling us all about all those cougars just as sure as he will be work for anyone rather than provide anything lasting.

Tony, you are a schmuck. Make sure to give Will Markland a job emptying your trash can.

This ain’t “hatin,” despite what you try to call it. It is merely colourful observation of insistent idiocy.