Newsarama Changeover

As you've no doubt read somewhere on the internet, most of the Newsarama team is no longer doing the comics blog. They've been replaced--after what seems like a big, long series of contract-y type disputes and no lived-up-to promises--with a crew of new people and a couple of people that've been a part of the site but not the part of the site.

After one day, the blog doesn't look that different or rather, if the names were all switched back to the familiar names, I'd would have thought it was a kinda off but not that different from any other day at Newsarama. The posts seem a little more formal and little more comfortable with just sorta towing the party line of comic news or press-releases pretending to be news, but that could have as much to do with everyone being new and nervous as it does them maybe being less interesting bloggers.

Still, the fact that this is where Newsarama stands is sort of depressing and frustrating. It's mainly just depressing because the group that bought Newsarama, Imaginova, scooped it up, didn't do anything with it, and alienated the staff (the people that made the site a site worth purchasing mind you). While the staff wasn't let go, it seems clear from delightfully honest accounts like this that continuing would've been both frustrating and kind of degrading...and that's if you know, it wasn't one of those "get these guys to quit so we don't have to fire them" type deals.

Clearly the site (or investment as Imaginova sees it) must go on and replacing the staff was necessary, but it seems to me, a good example of corporate interests totally missing the point of internet writing, blogging, whatever and the readers of these sites not having--or maybe not having--good enough taste to be discerning. Shouldn't Newsarama be treated by all us comics nerds as a site that needs to prove itself? I've removed it from the blogroll until it proves itself to be the fun, informative, news-y but ready to call "bullshit" on something site that made me read it in the first place.