It was my hope to avoid any sort public commentary, but when longtime supporter Ward Massey wrote me asking as he put it "What's goin' on..." I knew I had to open up to at least Ward anyway. So I took a risk and spelled out what happened and then asked his advice on what to do. His advice: just tell people what happened. Those who don't care won't care and those who do will appreciate your candor.
In that spirit, I am posting the actual email I wrote Ward (edited slightly for length). It is very painful and personal (and still way too long), but to those longtime supporters, I provide this here because you have always been like family anyway. Without any more stalling,here's what I sent Ward from a hotel room in DC in February. --Alice
Over the years I have laughed and learned from both of you. As to who gets custody of the friends (readers) I intend to follow both of your postings and hope that you each survive and grow in the direction you wish. Thank you both for being civil. Truth is always the best path.
Hi Alice, Painful as it is to you ... I think you did the right thing by standing your ground. Thank you.
Writing is hard ... editing is harder (well, GOOD editing is harder). Without someone watching over me ... and a certain reluctance to hit the send key without reading through several times, I'd be in constant trouble. I think we all have the evil genie sitting on our shoulders from time to time ... daring us to write down what we are thinking at the time ... I usually excise the evil genie by writing everything suggested ... and deleting rather than sending! Sometimes doesn't work, but hey, I'm trying. You didn't badmouth Bill (as far as I can read into things) ... just explained how you discovered your paths are now diverging. It's a brave thing to do ... opening up for all of us to read ... and I'm glad you did.
With FireFox, I use the tabbed browsing feature that let me click from site to site like TV channels. I figure that for our long term readers, you're just a click away from either one of us, and with double the content.
And thank you to Ward for his dead-on advice. He was so right - just tell people what happened. I wish it had a happier ending, but we sure had a long run. 15 years is a long time. (sigh)
Hey Alice, get over yourself. The website, and especially you and your reputation, are not nearly as big as you think. Take a look at Bill's site. Where is all the horrible political "stuff"? Get over yourself. this site will be dead in less than a year anyway...
We all have to make the business decisions that are right for us. I have tried to be respectful and explain my thinking. In the end, that's about all you can do. Seems to me that for most people, you just end up with two blogs instead of one, so I don't think that has to be the end of the world. As the guy before you put it "bad for you...good for me."
I haye to see it end! I've read your colums since they've started and I must say that to see them end really hurts. Having worked in the IT field for the past 20 years now,I have enjoyed the two personalities, opinions and thoughts of you both. I have both agreed and disagreed, loved and hated some of what was written and because of that, that was why I kept coming back for more. I wish you both peace!
I haye to see it end! I've read your colums since they've started and I must say that to see them end really hurts. Having worked in the IT field for the past 20 years now,I have enjoyed the two personalities, opinions and thoughts of you both. I have both agreed and disagreed, loved and hated some of what was written and because of that, that was why I kept coming back for more. I wish you both peace!
Hey, folk... My ears were burning. Had to find out why thirdhand.
I'm not going to say anything about what Alice wrote in particular except that yes, I do have a political blog. (I'm one of those fowl-mouthed consurvatibes, y'know. I think three people/day read the poliblog. That's not important. I just needed a place to rant.) You can find a link to it on my tech blog (if you're a good detective), where you'll also find a link to RTN. No, I'm not going to post the URL of either of my blogs here. That would be improper. If you find anything offensive at either place, well, I didn't drag you there with a gun.
Now, leave Alice alone about the whole thing, okay? We all follow our core beliefs and that's to be respected, whether you agree or disagree. It's water under the bridge and, by now, spread out in the ocean.
If you do miss me, just slide over to the RTN "About" page. I'm still plastered all over there like I was still all over here. ;-) (I know, Alice, you're working on it. That was a joke.)
Think of it this way, instead of having AliceandBill you now have Alice -and- Bill. It's like having two Yodels, but in separate packages instead of one.
Don't you people make me come back to this low rent district again.
(Love y'all, miss the 5 of you who haven't visited yet. TTFN.)
This must have been hard as hell for you Alice and you have my sympathy. I already have both sites bookmarked and I check them both on a daily basis. Is one better than the other? Not necessarily, both sites cover different things, so I get different news from both. I will still check out both sites and if possible, make donations.
As for the people leaving RealTechNews, guess you haven't learned that adults can have more than one love (so to speak) in the world.
I will wander over to both sites myself. For what it's worth I had noticed that things seemed to be straying significantly off course since you guys went independent. (I've been reading you guys since the beginning and remember reading computer shopper before it was glossy) You guys were the best when you stuck to tech. It seemed to me that some posts were just put up because one of you had an opinion on it, and it wasn't really tech at all. I saw this on both sides. In any case I'm sure it was difficult, but I'm sure glad that you were upfront with us, even if you took your sweet time to do it. Aaron H
It's slightly disheartening to see the both of you part ways, especially the mention of a dissolved frienship, but neither one of you will lose this reader. I'm glad the both of you stand on your ground. It's great to see different views and perspectives. I'm hoping the "dissolved" friendship bit isn't true, or at least the friendship outside of the professional world still exists.
To be perfectly honest, RTN or any other tech blog site is not something that I live for. RTN along with few others (now Bill's blog being one of them) is few places I visit during my morning coffee pilgrimage. I can not say separation of the ways is a good thing or bad one but as the number of places to follow for tech news increase, the time spent on each of them decrease rapidly. I noticed, my eyeballs on RTN page was not what it is used to be. I used to spend about 10-15 minutes every morning till about a month ago. Now, If I am there for 5, it is an exceptional day and I can say the same for Bill's page. One person spreading himself/herself too thin, taking care of the blog or any web page is not working. It is tested and true. I have ventured into being a webmaster, flying solo, in the past. I know from first hand experience, you need to devote a hell lot of time to keep people coming back. And the amount of effort to keep it going is humanly impossible if one does not have help creating content.
As I said I will keep an eye on both places but, slashdot will stay as my main tech news source even though I do not care much for their pro-liberal political stance.
I have read Alice and Bill since the early Shopper days (that is why I subscribed, so I will now let it lapse). 1) Thanks for all the good writing over the years and good info. 2)Since we may now get even more info (hopefully without much in the way of politics), you can use Firefox to open with multiple home pages (each on a seperate tab). Just open all the pages you want for home pages, then do tools;options;use current pages. gr
I am sorry you folks have split, and I wish both of you the best in the future.
Bill did send an email out, just saying what was up, not trying to pull anyone away. "I know that he has emailed a bunch of people and tried to pull them over to his tech website and I am just not going to be part of a tug of war and splitting and fighting for readers" is not correct. It was strictly a heads up and an invitation.
I went back to aliceandbill.com and looked for news on the split and found nothing.
I no longer look forward to my issues of Computer Shopper, but I hope both of you have future success and happiness.
Not to worry Shirley! Actually I got those URLs long before this happened because I was advised that the name aliceandbill was too amateurish and didn't say "Technology" to most people who search for information. So I spent about a week trying every last URL and finally nabbed this "real" series.
I'm glad that we got an explanation of the split. It's something that I'd been wondering about for some time now. I like both of you guys and I'm glad that this is being handled professionally.
It was my hope to avoid any sort public commentary, but when longtime supporter Ward Massey wrote me asking as he put it "What's goin' on..." I knew I had to open up to at least Ward anyway. So I took a risk and spelled out what happened and then asked his advice on what to do. His advice: just tell people what happened. Those who don't care won't care and those who do will appreciate your candor.