Today, MLK day even, two new sites launched on WordPress.com VIP that I’m personally pretty excited about.
PandoDaily
PandoDaily is a brand new tech site started by Sarah Lacy, former senior editor at TechCrunch. From her announcement post:
We have one goal here at PandoDaily: To be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle. That sounds simple but it’ll be incredibly hard to pull off. It’s not something we accomplish on day one or even day 300. It’s something we accomplish by waking up every single day and writing the best stuff we can, and continually adding like-minded staffers who have the passion, drive and talent to do the same.
So… this sounds like a newer, better, and fresher TechCrunch starting from scratch. And she’s recruited Michael Arrington, MG Siegler, Paul Carr and Farhad Manjoo as regular contributors. Props to Sara Cannon for pulling off the design.
Grist
Grist, a non-profit environmental news publication, is near and dear to my heart. It’s why I’m on the technology side of publishing instead of photographing in the third world. In summer 2007, I worked an awesome web production internship where, in exchange for a bit of copy and pasting into the CMS, I had the freedom to explore publishing on the web and to start developing my skills. That was back in the days of Bricolage; Grist has since been on ExpressionEngine. Props to Matt Perry and Nathan Letsinger for making the switch happen (and to the Otto and Nacin show for their support).
Want to help publishers kick ass with WordPress? Come join my team — we’re hiring.