When I was a teen, I became the kid who transferred schools. You know the type: someone who lived in transition, changing schools, neighborhoods, and friends often. At its worst, I changed high schools five times in three years. And like many things at that age, the transfers were for reasons out of my control.
I had two revelations during those years when I was learning about both who I was and wanted to be. The first was that each move was a chance at reinvention. The second was that no matter my goals for who I wanted to be, I would be a product of my setting. Whether I liked it or not, the opportunities I had—and my potential to seize them—would be meaningfully influenced by my setting. For better or worse, who I was would be partly the result of what was around me.
This month, Lifehacker was sold from G/O Media to Ziff Davis.
Some of the changes have been immediate. If you’re a regular reader, for example, you may have noticed that Lifehacker stopped publishing slideshows. Slideshows were a reality of our previous context, whether I liked it or not. (I did not.) Those in-line ads are gone, too.
After seeing our site free of its usual glut of ads, one editor said, “I want to cry.” It was a joke, but also it wasn’t.
Another editor said, “Whoa, the page just...loads. And then after each paragraph of text is another paragraph of text.”
If you don’t work in digital media or live on the internet, you might find those things unremarkable. But to us, they’re huge UI improvements that make our stories look better and read more clearly.
Other changes will be longer term but will follow the same logic of eliminating slideshows and publishing things like the Home Remedy Handbook by Senior Health Editor Beth Skwarecki, which we were proud to publish earlier this month. We want to focus on thoughtful, challenging, and entertaining advice to build a relationship with our more loyal readers while also welcoming new ones.
Slideshows, ads, and thinly-veiled SEO grabs will continue to be a reality in the shrinking landscape of free journalism. I don’t see fixes to those problems on the horizon—frankly, after countless media layoffs recently I feared that Lifehacker was being closed to cut costs instead of being acquired—but my goal is to make Lifehacker the best it can be within that landscape.
A recent comment from Kinja user Blaine summarized my hopes when they said, “This is among the best and most informative writing I’ve seen on Lifehacker or any similar outlet, bar none. Thank you.”
Speaking of Kinja, Lifehacker’s new home will also mean a shift to a new platform. Lifehacker may look a little different in the coming months, but most changes should be either negligible or clear improvements for readers.
The change will also be a turning point for our comments section, which sometimes reflects the toxicity and bad-faith reactions that are common in anonymous, unmoderated forums. Allowing those comments was my failure: I ignored them and often expected my writers to do the same, and allowed more bullying and abusive language than I should have. I’m eager to fix that in the future with a comments policy that has zero tolerance for personal attacks, insults, and general hate-reading. Our community won’t be for those who visit for little reason other than to pick fights.
You can expect to hear from me more, too. The Lifehacker team knows me well, but our readers less so—mostly because I rarely write for the site and generally limit my Twitter profile to posting about comics, video games, or my book. But I should be a more willing and visible face of the brand that I love so much. (If you really want to get to know me and the worldview I bring to Lifehacker, you can read my book.)
It’s a new beginning for Lifehacker, and an opportunity for reinvention. Much of it will be in our control. Some of it won’t. But I’m confident that Lifehacker’s new business home will be more conducive to the site I want us to be. Regardless, I love a lofty goal: to give some of the best and most informative content that you can find on the internet.
