Groklaw was like a big, angry shark gobbling up all of the material that a half-dozen journalists in open source and technology journalism would have loved to cover, had they not been emasculated by editors who were in love with PJ. It was a big ego game for her, not to achieve fame, but to achieve some level of personal satisfaction. It was always my hunch that she was filling some empty void in her life with Groklaw -- mommy and daddy made her feel useless, so Groklaw was her way of fighting back. Or she had an abusive husband and Groklaw was her only power in the world. Whatever. It doesn't matter now.

Apparently all the PJ lovers missed the posts where she promoted religion, and called for the censorship of OSTG/OSDN journalists because NewsForge published an editorial about being okay with using proprietary software, and told people that it wasn't okay for kids to believe in Santa Claus. PJ executed hit jobs on anyone who publicly disagreed with her or her ideology.

She reveled in that power. She had the entire tech journalism establishment by the balls, and she wasn't afraid to use that to satisfy her personal vendettas. Anybody who questioned PJ in the least was accused from every angle of being a Microsoft or SCO shill, or taking money from some front company. Anyone who asked who PJ was and how she was making her living (perfectly valid questions -- the same ones she asked of everyone who spoke out against her or did anything she didn't like) was subjected to an Anonymous-style attack from her community of blind followers. One person even claimed to have been the victim of arson at the hands of a Groklaw fan, but nobody could print those stories because PJ had a stranglehold on the tech news publishers. Nobody was allowed to publish anything about Groklaw.

Except of course the one rogue publication that did the same thing to PJ that she did to her enemies. PJ deserved what Maureen O'Gara dished up to her -- and more. There were so few actual journalists in that industry anyway... everyone was either starfucking Groklaw and promoting Linux and the FSF with fluff pieces, or they were prevented by editors from chasing stories that showed those shadow-gods in a negative light. Had Groklaw never existed, open source and Linux journalism would have been so much better for it... there would have been real story-chasers, not free software worshippers and fanboys.

I used to be in Web publishing. I understand how difficult it is to make money off of smart people on the Web. They know how to block your ads, and even if they refuse to block them, they ignore them. The real money is in stupid people who use IE6 and click on everything that blinks.

If it were easy to figure this shit out, there would be a lot more valid competition.