Building and maintaining that loyal reader community was one of my favorite parts about working for Jez's sister-site Jalopnik. Hell, I keep in touch with those weirdos today, and re-found a lot of them in the Autopian and Defector comments. It's where I came from, after all. OppositeLock 4ever.

A loyal reader base will be there when the search and social algorithms falter. It's enviable to have in media, and our sites did so much to foster that. Everything that G/O's private equity ghouls have done to destroy that community—from shuttering user blogs to closing Jezebel—defies all sense.