I won’t go into a long diatribe here, but this is one of those times when I have to respond to something. MG Siegler, over on his personal blog, put together a post that essentially talked about the death of blogging because of chasing page views. While it’s no secret that almost every top blog lives and dies by advertising revenue (therefore, by views on a page) I have to agree with my friend and co-worker Matthew Panzarino: “There’s still good work to be done.”

In fact, that’s one of the very things that we’re trying to work toward at TNW. Yes, we still cover breaking news and we try to do it faster and more accurately than anyone else. We do this because our readers have shown us time and again that it’s something that they want. But we also do more in-depth, “feature-length” pieces (see Courtney Boyd Myers’ piece on the future of Hipmunk) because we respect that many of our readers want that content as well.

What’s frustrating is that often times the longer, more important pieces don’t get the attention that they deserve. We live in a society that wants bite-sized information, with few exceptions. The challenge then becomes this: How do you provide what the reader wants without becoming the next Business Insider?

I specifically mention BI/SAI because there’s probably no site that’s worse about taking an in-depth story, ferreting out a nugget and then publishing a 100-word “post” based on it. There’s merit to this method, but the merit is given no justice when it rapes the original content down to nothing more than a shadow of its former self. We challenge our writers at TNW to dig in to longer content and to find those morsels, but to do justice to them by providing more context than what was originally given. For us, this has worked as a method of balance, and we will continue to do it.

MG, we met once.  You probably don’t remember. At the time, I told you congratulations on the acquisition from AOL and wished you the best. Obviously things have gone well for you, if not for the property for which you once worked. But now that you’re on the outside, I’ll say that it’s exceptionally easy to sit in the stands and take shots. I understand your frustration, because I deal with it every single day. But I deal with it from the inside; a place you once were.

The wisest of my former employers once told me words that I still preach today: Come to me with any problem that you want, but do so only if you have at least one possible solution. For us at TNW, the solution is simple, if not the manner by which to achieve it. Do good work. There’s still good work to be done.

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