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In case you aren't familiar with The Oregonian's family tree, here are the basics: Advance Publications is a media conglomerate owned by the Newhouse family. Their empire includes a bunch of regional newspapers, the Condé Nast dynasty and the comfy, cozy home of racists, misogynist and general all-purpose trolls worldwide, Reddit. That makes your local paper sister to the site that hosts the racist Field of Dreams, "Coon Town" subreddit, plus the "Jailbait" subreddit with sexualized photos of young girls, and "The Red Pill," where Men's Rights Activists plot seduction.
Last week, Reddit took its trolling to the top by basically forcing its CEO, Ellen Pao, out of her job. Pao, who is also known for a gender discrimination lawsuit she lost against a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, was apparently never that popular with the Reddit community. She did things Reddit's volunteer moderators didn't like: specifically, she cracked down on subreddits created just to harass people. The final straw for the community though was when Pao fired popular talent director and Ask Me Anything coordinator Victoria Taylor. The moderators shut down a bunch of subreddits in protest and ultimately, they won and Pao decided to leave. Now Pao is being replaced by one of the site's cofounders, Steve Huffman.
It turns out Pao might not have been responsible for firing Taylor at all. Former Reddit CEO, Yishan Wong, has accused Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian of letting Pao take the fall for the decision to fire Taylor, even though it was all his. Yesterday, on Reddit (of course), Wong wrote: "...when the hate-train started up against Pao, Alexis should have been out front and center saying very clearly 'Ellen Pao did not make this decision, I did.' Instead, he just sat back and let her take the heat. That's a stunning lack of leadership and an incredibly shitty thing to do."
Wong has said that he thinks this is all part of long con to get Reddit free from the Newhouse clan. Just might work, too. There are probably a few Oregonian readers who'd be up for a plot to free Portland's semidaily newspaper from them, too.
WWeek 2015