What's wrong with THG?

It seems to me that it was less than two weeks ago that a thread started beseeching Omid to return THG to it's former status of a premier technology journalistic website. I read the whole post and agreed wholeheartedly. I have been a THG visitor since before the PIII and the 440BX chipset (so since 97-98), although my participation in the forums has been much more recent. I too have watched THG slip (especially since the sale, where are you Tom?) until I am almost embarrassed to have it bookmarked. I wonder what Tom himself thinks of this place.

Now to get down to the reason I posted this thread. As I mentioned ,I read the entire post to Omid. Apparently this has not been heeded. My proof, the THG video of OC'ing a bacon sandwich??? . First off let me say that I do have a sense of humor. I wouldn't mind seeing this type of thing, as long as I was still receiving the quality of tech news and reviews that we all remember from past years. But we don't get that type of reporting here anymore, just this crap. The ramblings and musings of people who genuinely don't have a clue why THG was popular all those years ago.

Getting to the video itself. It's production values are in the toilet. The guy in it (Ben) is less than articulate. It seems to me that this guy was exactly the wrong guy to pull this off, because he looks like he should be on SlimFast and leave the bacon sandwiches alone. No offense, the techgeek himself could stand to lose a few pounds too, but it's not my fat a$$ in the video talking about something that is totally worthless to this community.

Come on THG (Omid) if you can't raise the bar of journalism overnight, at least have the decency to to keep this kind of thing off your website. You are the laughing stock of the tech community and you don't seem to care. Thank God for the forums or this place would be a total waste of bandwidth. How long do you think it will take before that disappears too? I see it already happening. Before everything good about this place is gone, change.

I promise, that should I do more editorial side work, that my next projects will be COMPUTER HARDWARE or COMPUTER GAME related.

I can't promise that I will be a good presenter, but I will try my very best.

If you have any suggestions or story ideas, preferably ones that can be made for less than the price of 5 bacon sandwiches, please, let me know.

Sengoku, your intent is noble. Truly. I am not being sarcastic. But unfortunately you miss the point entirely.....or else it's wishful thinking. Either way, here is the point is the most briefest of words possible:

You don't own the site. You don't have journalistic control.

Sorry to be blunt, but that's the deal.


Further, as for ideas.........many, MANY of us oldtimers have typed pages and PAGES of article ideas. Rob even asked for some feedback directly from me. And we haven't seen hardly ANY change. And in fairness to Rob, even as Editor......he's not the Owner. Rob did what he could do, but if he can't even make articles fly, then how will you??

Again, I mean no offense, but I think you are still a bit green and idealistic. This song and dance has been played here before like a broken record. Go look at Anand.....see what TECH stuff they do. Start there and you'll quickly see how THG is a stone's throw away from being CNET.

Perhaps THG should just admit what everyone already knows and just let's all move on to our respective directions from there: That this site is no longer an enthusiast site. It's a mainstream (and n00b-oriented) site that happens to be frequented in some cases by enthusiasts in the forums. There's no shame in that, but let's not delude ourselves. It is what it is. And it is NOT what it used to be. It's that simple.

Just face reality, it's a far less painful pill to swallow.