April 17, 2001

Dear Whoever,

We are Closed. Despite the daily e-mails we receive in praise of our alleged daily work, there hasn't been any daily work on Tabloid.net since late 1998. There hasn't been a single new article posted since July of 2000. You could count the new articles posted since April 1999 on your fingers, if you could count, or if you had fingers.

While it's touching to receive sentiments like the "Glad to see you're back" note of April 16, we're not back, and we're not coming back. One of our former editors had the Bright Idea to change the front page to a Blogger thing, sometime last year, with the intention of using said Blog to direct Tabloid visitors to the work of ex-Tabloid.net writers. But he quickly grew bored of this pointless task.

And we grow weary of getting e-mails about something we haven't thought about in a long, long time. So, let's repeat: Tabloid.net is closed. Don't send us your story ideas, don't come around here peddling your snapshots of some third-rate teevee actor, don't ask us to research your journalism-school project on tabloid newspapers, don't contact us at all unless you plan to give us money. We are always delighted to receive money.

Until we figure out an easy way to purge the archives, you are of course free to search the hundreds of old stories and columns still floating around the Tabloid.net server. But don't ask us about these things, and don't report bad links, or you'll give us a reason to spend too many hours removing every last trace of Tabloid.net.

If you want something to read, the Web sites belonging to former Tabloid.net contributors Matt Welch, Ken Layne, Emmanuelle Richard and the Rev. Tony Pierce are occasionally updated. Pierce's site is the best of the sorry lot (Richard's might be the best, but we can't read French so well).

The Online Journalism Review is full of stuff by ex-Tabloiders such as Tim Blair and the aforementioned Welch, Richard and Layne. BusinessWeek hosts our former Honolulu bureau chief, Alex Salkever, and ABCNews.com is the home of our Tokyo/New York ace, Ed Mazza. Jason Ross can sometimes be seen hanging around McSweeneys, as can Mr. Blair, when he's not writing for Time, Sydney's Daily Telegraph or Sports Illustrated. We're not sure about the rest of the drunks.

Good Luck,
The Editors