Lots of businesses get hate mail, but few owners react the way Dooce's Heather Armstrong does. She prints out nasty emails, puts them in her driveway and drives over them with her car. "That's the attitude I have," she says, "and it's made my life a thousand percent better."

"At first, she wore a va-va-va-voom dress. I told her she'd catch pneumonia. Now she wears a sweater and jeans. I'm very proud of that." — Valleywag editor and sweater bear Owen Thomas, bragging — bragging! — about his campaign to stamp out the last remnants of glam in Silicon Valley. Thanks for nothing, bosstard.

Forget blogging. The future is old media, at least for Perez Hilton. Mario Lavandeira will launch a twice-daily miniradio show starting May 5. The shows, each three minutes long, will run during morning and afternoon drivetimes in LA, NYC and Chicago. He's also going to make more television appearances, appear in a movie, write a book and make a possible deal with Warner Bros. Records. Hilton hopes all the attention will drive traffic to his website and "introduce me, potentially, to a whole new audience." Who needs Perez Hilton? We have our very own gay gossip blogger, and his faux-hawk is far superior to Perez's strange do, thank you very much.

Jon Friedman's media columns for MarketWatch rarely leave me short on words. But the worst thing I can say about his latest one, which hails Valleywag as a new media creation which he says has surpassed its New York "cousin" Gawker, is that it goes on far too long. 726 words of logorrhea on a gossip rag? Even on a slow news day, that's too much to bother reading. Forthwith, a 100-word version of "How Valleywag trumps Gawker — and enlivens Silicon Valley":

A source tells us San Francisco-based blog network Green Options Media will shutter by June, having burned through at least $800,000 in a little under two years. Blame cofounder David Anderson. This "arrogant wankhammer wantrepreneur," in the source's colorful description, funded the blog network with an early inheritance from his father, who now plans to pull the plug on the operation. Still clinging to hope, Anderson is said to be frantically trying to raise money as the blog network burns through $60,000 a month. Problem is: monthly pageviews across the entire 14-blog network have yet to pass 600,000. Update: David Anderson responds in the comments below.

We hear Michael Arrington is in advanced talks to acquire VentureBeat, a smaller tech blog which, like Arrington's TechCrunch, is trying to expand from the niche of covering startups. When Arrington issued a rant about the dangers of tech blogs raising venture capital, it was easy to dismiss his talk of a blog rollup as drunken fantasy. Arrington's concern: That his competitors, by raising money one by one, would make it financially impossible to assemble a "dream team" of bloggers. But why on earth would anyone accept a lower valuation just to be part of Arrington's team? Arrington, we're told, has tentatively secured venture backing from Eric Chin of Bay Partners, a longtime business associate. That would give him the capital to buy up at least some of his rivals.

As easy on editors as mindless lists are in print, they're even better online. Time.com has perfected the art with its "first annual blog index," cashing in the magazine's tastemaking reputation on a crassly effective pageview-generating effort. We're mostly jealous we didn't do it first. Fark.com's Drew Curtis sums it up: "That's the point — pick shit people don't agree with, generate controversy, SPREAD THE FUCKING THING OVER 50 PAGES WITH NO INDEX, profit." We suspect if Fark actually showed up on the list — nah, Curtis would still tell 'em they were hosers. Here, we'll make it easy for both you and Drew. Rather than clicking "next" two dozen times on Time's page, just read our one-page version below. That seems easier.

The week's not complete until bulldog-cute Mahalo chief Jason Calacanis writes in. Today JC emailed twice to call out a gaping hole in the much-discussed New Dentonomics of our 2008 Valleywag pay scale. His numbers are out of date; our new pageview rate for the second quarter is in, and it's $6.50 per thousand pageviews. But Calacanis spotted a bigger slap to the face than the CPM, one so big that Portfolio blogger Felix Salmon will have to do a whole 'nother post now to say he knew it all along. Can you guess what it is?

Matt Marshall's VentureBeat airs a rumor that John Battelle's online blog-ad network, Federated Media, has sold a large stake to Oak Hill Capital. There's logic to it: Oak Hill is a private-equity firm with which his bankers, GCA Savvian, has previously done business. Battelle, left, was on a conference call when I tried to reach him, but in the past he's offered no comment on investment rumors. Another source dashes cold water on the notion that a deal's been done. I'd be the first to tell you not all rumors pan out. What I find more interesting about the report is this line:

Steve Rubel, Edelman PR's Director of Insights, posts an insightful chart from an international survey (PDF) Edelman conducted. It shows that "opinion elites," defined as college-educated people in the top income quartile of their country who report a significant interest in and engagement with the media, business news, and policy affairs — that's you! — mostly trust people like themselves. Who's at the bottom of the trust-o-meter? Bloggers, who fell well behind company CEOs. Regular company employees are given much more credibility. This is why Google's PR people slap engineers' names on those blog posts the marcom specialists type up, and why Nick Denton announces changes at Gawker Media by letting me "leak" them. Trust me, I'm a blogger.

Starbucks has an unofficial blog, as do Apple, Google. But Craigslist has not had a blog, unofficial or otherwise (unless you count Craig Newmark's thoughts on national politics). That changed last month when Tim White launched the unofficial Craigslist Blog. Now White's blog has been countered with an official one, written by CEO Jim Buckmaster. Between posts, Buckmaster decided to threaten a lawsuit. Chilling Effects suggests Tim White, the blogger behind the unofficial site, might have a case for saving his site's domain name. Buckmaster's letter, and White's feisty response, after the jump:

Jordan Golson, Valleywag's resident hypercapitalist, is distressed that he's not going to learn the terms of his pageview-based bonus — which, mind you, he'll likely earn on top of his $2,500-a-month base pay — until three days into the second quarter. The ginger whinger made me proud with a headline so sensational that it offended even my boss. But he disappointed me by wasting readers' time, taking a self-indulgent 542 words to get his point across. After the jump, a readable version of Golson's overwrought, underreported screed:

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore isn't dating Julia Allison. Still. But he is moving to San Francisco today. In this clip he sounds like he's lived here for years. Mahalo's Sean Percival asks Cashmore: "How long do you think its going to take before classic American greed and venture capitalists corrupt you?" Cashmore's swoon-inducing answer: "I think it's happening. I'm completely corruptible." Jump into our arms again, big boy — we think we're in love.

The rate that my employer, Gawker Media, pays its contract writers was adjusted tonight at midnight. The staff of this site has not been told the details of the new pay rate, but we do know that everyone at Valleywag is getting a per-view pay decrease. Senior management is promising the hit is only a "modest reduction." I'm told we'll find out the new pay plan by the end of the week. In the mean time, writers are getting a paycut, but are expected to continue working even though we don't know what we're getting paid. Read on for some background and an explanation of how Gawker writers are compensated.

It takes a brave man to get in the middle of TechCrunch's bloggin' VC Michael Arrington and PaidContent founding editor Rafat Ali as they duke it out over the future of their micromedia empires. Timesman Saul Hansell is nothing but brave. In a Bits blog post, he quotes Rafat Ali's new hired hand Nathan Richardson saying that PaidContent differentiates itself from TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider and our own Valleywag because it "has not gone down the road of following personal foibles." Then, towards the end of the piece, Ali himself suggeests that Arrington is thinking too small by gunning for CNET:

Congratulations, bloggers! OfficeMax has granted all of you — each and every one of you — "exclusive access" to top marketer Bob Thacker! You can meet him next Friday, in fact! And by "meet," OfficeMax means "listen to him read part of a speech on a conference call." A thought for all you bloggers: If you want exclusive access to Thacker, why not look up the number for OfficeMax's headquarters in Naperville, Illinois and just call him? Heck, I'll save you the work: 630-438-7800. That seems easier.

ContentNext Media, the parent company of blogtrepreneur Rafat Ali's media news site PaidContent.org has named former Dow Jones executive Nathan Richardson as the company's new CEO. He's pictured here in his days as general manager of Yahoo Finance. Most recently, Richardson has been doing volunteer work in Liberia for the International Rescue Committee. The move will free Ali from his role as CEO to focus on editorial duties. Look for the company to announce another senior-level hire by early next week. The move makes it clear that company is focused on continuing to grow independently — and Ali certainly won't be selling it to TechCrunch investor-slash-journalist Michael Arrington anytime soon. Update: More on the company's as-yet-unannounced moves after the jump.

What is Josh Quittner, the former editor of Business 2.0, doing for his next act? Since September, he's had an unhappy career at Fortune, the Time Inc.-owned corporate sibling which took him and a few other refugees from the magazine in. He's been earning what we hear is a mid-six-figures salary playing Scrabulous, and then writing about it. (Actual quote from a recent column: "Clearly, I had too much time on my hands.") The latest I'd heard on Quittner, my former boss, was that he was leaving Fortune to return to Time, where he worked before joining Business 2.0, as its Marin County-based tech correspondent. But he may have another exit strategy in mind. in 2006, Quittner registered roofmagazine.com.

The April issue of Wired has a lengthy piece on gadget blogs. Most of the focus is on Gizmodo (disclosure: Valleywag is owned by Gawker Media, parent company to Gizmodo) and the rise of the gadget blogs in influence and reach. It's worth a read, but if you're too busy frantically reloading Engadget and Gizmodo to read the whole thing, we've tagged the high points below.