Though he only joined Valleywag in March, Jackson West made a lasting impression with his sharp wit, good humor, and wicked visual imagination. As fluent in Photoshop as he is in Foucault, our token communard laced his posts with insights into the inner workings of the Web. Listed below are my favorite pieces by Jackson. Leave your own in the comments — and keep following him at jacksonwest.com.
We would never sugarcoat someone else's layoffs. Why ours? Gawker Media, our publisher, has told me to cut Valleywag's costs, in anticipation of an advertising recession. In response, I have laid off associate editors Nicholas Carlson and Jackson West and reporter Melissa Gira Grant. They have all been doing excellent work, breaking stories and needling Silicon Valley. But our ultimate boss, Nick Denton, has decided he can't afford them. Paul Boutin and I will continue running the site. Denton's memo:
Why did I let Jackson West take a vacation? While our associate editor was away, we actually wrote something nice about Gavin Newsom — and he only had to save San Francisco from a rogue IT guy to do it! Microsoft's Windows chief, Kevin Johnson, ended up in Sunnyvale, Calif. — but not, as he'd hoped, in the corner office at Yahoo HQ. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg flubbed more media interviews this week, prompting us to suggest he get help. Maybe he could take tips from the Internet-famous Julia Allison, who crashed his developers' conference?Allison's sort-of ex, Digg cofounder Kevin Rose, said he was buying Google. Surely not for Knol, Google's weak attempt at taking on Wikipedia — at launch, its search engine didn't even work. Jackson, come back and help us make sense of this crazy business! (Photo by Jason Calacanis)
It's our second-to-last happy hour at Moose's and this week we're spending it welcoming our new associate editor, Jackson West, starting at 4 p.m. in the bar area. Afterwards, the plan is to mix in some food from the taco truck at the Adaptive Path Seventh Anniversary being held at 111 Minna. Tomorrow, "Geeks Doing Good" is trying to get people to volunteer time at the San Francisco Food Bank. No jokes from us, just get out there and help! Late Saturday night: Justin.tv's one-year anniversary. Bring your hatcam.
(Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)
