Skrentablog

Yahoo! is hoping a quirky take on the news will strike a chord as its next original programming effort.

The Web giant confirmed Wednesday that it will launch a new initiative before the end of this quarter that will feature a journalist-cum-crooner who will sing the news.
    -- Hollywood Reporter (via PaidContent)

I know a lot of folks over at Yahoo and they're great. I actually feel really bad every time I lob a rock at them. Plus they give me all kinds of grief over how negative I'm being. And what do I know, The Daily Show is the most watched news show for a certain age segment, so maybe with Youtube viral distribution and whatnot this singing news show will be some kind of real hit.

But on another level, it's just wrong. It's not "Yahoo News". The Daily Show isn't a brand extension from World News Tonight, it's over on Comedy Central where it belongs. Singing news isn't news, and singing news doesn't scale. It may be a great show, but making little musical productions come out of this company with such a proud heritage as a valley tech titan is almost too much for me to bear. Yahoo has truly lost its way and needs to fix it right now.

Serious Yahoo engineers -- quit before further damage is done to your resumes. I will hire you. Google will hire you. Someone will hire you. You will be happier in an org that values tech and scale and algorithms. Where your boss comes by and chides you for not having met with the patent attorney lately to try to file some stuff. Get out of there!