failure

You Thought You Would Get Rich Investing in Etsy—Nope

Hamilton Nolan · 01/11/16 01:36PM

Far be it from Gawker.com to claim to be the finest financial blog “in the markets,” but we can tell you this: your special “high flying” “IPO” stocks are getting clobbered!!!

A Terrified Nation Gets the NSA Debate It Deserves

Hamilton Nolan · 11/19/14 11:35AM

Edward Snowden, an enemy of America, released top secret information so powerful that it would destroy the government's ability to keep Americans safe. Information so powerful that, in fact... nothing has changed.

Why Was Target Canada Such a Disaster?

Hamilton Nolan · 05/21/14 11:20AM

Beleaguered retail empire Target announced weak-ass first quarter earnings today, thanks in large part to its disastrous Target Canada division, which lost $211 million just this quarter. How did Target Canada become the laughingstock of the retail industry? A Target Canada veteran explains in detail, below.

$35 Billion Merger Fails Because Everyone in Charge Is a Baby

Hamilton Nolan · 05/09/14 09:07AM

Last summer, two enormous advertising companies, Omnicom and Publicis, announced that they'd be merging to form the world's most enormous advertising company. Yesterday, they announced the deal is off. Why? Because these companies are essentially kindergarteners.

Why Don't You Eat at Quiznos Any More?

Hamilton Nolan · 12/06/13 01:26PM

Quiznos—the sandwich place, you know, with the "toasty" kinda subs? That one. Real popular place, not too long ago. What happened?

Jeff Zucker Says Jeff Zucker Is Top Candidate to Take Over CNN

John Cook · 11/28/12 01:25PM

Failure virtuoso Jeff Zucker—the man who singlehandedly dismantled NBC as an entertainment powerhouse, replaced Friends with likes of Good Morning Miami and Inside Schwartz, lost NBC Universal a billion dollars in ad revenue in just one year, brought a man named Donald Trump to your television screens, and bungled an attempted transition at NBC's Tonight Show franchise with a galactic ineptness that even at the remove of two years continues to strain credulity—is going to save CNN now!

All the Mistakes Four Ohio College Kids Made Trying to Set Up Their Campus Ecstasy Lab

Hamilton Nolan · 11/27/12 10:19AM

Four Ohio college students were indicted earlier this month on a multitude of drug charges, after they were caught last May trying to steal chemicals from a school chemistry lab in order to cook up some ecstasy in "an empty dorm room." An all too typical tale. For purposes of instruction—and to ensure that future college ecstasy labs are more professionally run—allow us to examine what mistakes they made in their budding criminal enterprise, all detailed exhaustively in this Plain-Dealer story:

Why Cities Go Bankrupt

Hamilton Nolan · 11/13/12 12:30PM

San Bernardino, California filed for bankruptcy last August. It is a poor city, yes. The economy is bad, yes. But why does one city fail while many others like it don't?

Psst: Nobody Needs a Magazine About 'Social Media'

Hamilton Nolan · 10/26/11 08:34AM

Here's the thing about the internet sites Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google: you do not need to read a magazine about them. For one thing, if you want to learn about them, you can simply type their address into your internet browser, and there they are, updated constantly, by the second, rather than monthly, as would be a case with a magazine. Want to know more? Why not read one of the thousands and thousands of blogs and online news sites that talk about them each and every day?

Why is Kanye West's Charity Dead?

Seth Abramovitch · 04/21/11 12:14AM

Move over, Madonna: Yet another pop megalomaniac's educational charity has met a premature end, as the Kanye West Foundation is no more. But why that is, and where its millions of dollars in corporate donations have gone, remains a mystery.