Owen Thomas (born March 30, 1972) is an American

blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

, and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

. He is the business editor at The ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pa ...

''. He was the founding executive editor of

The Daily Dot ''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, ''The Daily Dot'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometow ...

and former executive editor of

VentureBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. History The ''VentureBeat'' company was founded in 2006 by Matt Marshall, ...

. He was the managing editor of

Valleywag Valleywag was a Gawker Media blog with gossip and news about Silicon Valley personalities. It was initially launched under the direction of editor Nick Douglas in February 2006. After Douglas was fired,Gawker Media Gawker Media LLC (formerly Blogwire, Inc. and Gawker Media, Inc.) was an American online media company and blog network. It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and was based in New York City. Incorporated in the Cayman Islands ...

gossip and news blog about

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

personalities that bills itself as a "tech gossip rag".

Career

Thomas graduated from

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (also known as TJHSST, TJ, or Jefferson) is a Virginia state-chartered magnet high school in Fairfax County, Virginia operated by Fairfax County Public Schools. The school occupies the b ...

. He is a 1994 graduate of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the be ...

. He first worked at

Suck.com Suck.com was an online magazine, one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a great variety of topics, including politics and pop-culture. Launched in 1995 and geared towards a Generati ...

, and later at the former technology magazine ''

Business 2.0 ''Business 2.0'' was a monthly magazine publication founded by magazine entrepreneur Chris Anderson, Mark Gross, and journalist James Daly in order to chronicle the rise of the "New Economy". First published in July 1998, the magazine was sold ...

''. He was managing editor of the Silicon Valley gossip website

Valleywag Valleywag was a Gawker Media blog with gossip and news about Silicon Valley personalities. It was initially launched under the direction of editor Nick Douglas in February 2006. After Douglas was fired,San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gove ...

. Thomas does some on-screen commentary in the film '' Revenge of the Electric Car''. In 2013, Thomas was named Editor-in-Chief of

ReadWrite ReadWrite (originally ReadWriteWeb or RWW) is a Web technology blog launched in 2003. RW covers Web 2.0 and Web technology in general, and provides industry news, reviews, and analysis. Founded by Richard MacManus, Technorati ranked ReadWrite ...

. He joined the ''

'' in 2016.

Valleywag

Thomas replaced

Nick Denton Nicholas Guido Anthony Denton (born 24 August 1966) is a British Internet entrepreneur, journalist and blogger, the founder and former proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and was the managing editor of the New York-based ''Gawker'' ...

as the managing editor of Valleywag on July 6, 2007. Valleywag, a two-man operation, was written mostly by Thomas, with help from its former editor, Nick Douglas. In 2007, Thomas

outed Outing is the act of disclosing an LGBT person's sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. It is often done for political reasons, either to instrumentalize homophobia in order to discredit political opponents or to com ...

Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Fac ...

as gay while Thiel was in Saudi Arabia on business in Valleywag. In response, Thiel covertly funded lawsuits by third parties against Gawker Media, Valleywag's parent. Thiel's role came to light in the aftermath of the '' Bollea v. Gawker'' verdict, which awarded Bollea, known professionally as

Hulk Hogan Terry Eugene Bollea (; born August 11, 1953), better known by his ring name Hulk Hogan, is an American retired professional wrestler. He is widely regarded as the most recognized wrestling star worldwide and the most popular wrestler of the 1 ...

, $140 million after Gawker published a sex tape of him. Thomas contends that Thiel's sexuality was already "known to a wide circle", so his coverage did not constitute an outing.

References

External links

Valleywag
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Owen 1972 births Living people American bloggers American columnists American mass media company founders American online journalists American online publication editors American technology journalists Place of birth missing (living people) Gawker Media American LGBT journalists Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology alumni University of Chicago alumni 21st-century American non-fiction writers