Kate Solomon

The sad news broke last week that Shiny Media has gone into administration. All sorts of heinous crap has been shot* about this in the last few days. I won’t link to the gossip-loving drama fiends but suffice to say that plenty of gratuitous, self-serving rubbish has been spewed by people who are in no way involved and know next to nothing about the situation but are paid to write well-timed controversial posts as traffic and comment bait.

I think I’ll be avoiding that particular blog from now on. Likewise that other blog.

All the online drama aside, whilst the news was in no way a surprise, I was pretty sad about the whole Shiny meltdown. I’ve been a reader/viewer of TechDigest and ShinyShiny for a long time, and during my forays into PR everyone I’ve spoken to on both sites has been jolly nice. I used to envy the working environment of the Twitter-based Shinies before they all left/got laid off because they all seemed to really enjoy working there, and I’ll still seek out their work now because I know I’ll enjoy reading it.

It was exciting to know there was a company like Shiny Media out there – founded and run by people a lot like me. Not only was it young and vibrant, it also gave off the impression that should one feel that way inclined, one could possibly do something similar. Not to undermine the talent and hard work that the founders put in, obviously you have to have something a bit more special than just a laptop and a brain to make it work even for a short time. But at the very least its existence was sort of (oh god, this is going to sound so gushing and lame… forgive me) inspirational.

And, on a wholly selfish note as someone who would one day like to write words about stuff for a living, it’s one less entry route. What with there being a major job-drought in the writing arena and Shiny being famed for their willingness to take someone on based on the brilliance of their personal blog (I’d be a shoe-in on that front, yeah?) rather than academic or actual journalist-ing experience, it’s a blow to all us experience-less would-be pros.

The loss of the company aside, I sincerely hope that all the freelancers and employees find work they enjoy to replace it – and find it soon; check out this wonderfully positive blog post for more informed info on the full-time staffers.

*the other notable thing about this week being that I’ve been re-reading Catcher in the Rye