Linux Weekly News picks up LinuxToday founder as new staff member

– by Tina Gasperson –
Dave Whitinger, the guy who created
LinuxToday.com, is taking a position as
director of business development with
Linux Weekly News.

In 1997, Whitinger founded a Linux news
Web site called “Three Point’s Linux
News Service.” He marketed it all over
the Net, posting announcements and press
releases about his news feeds and
mailing lists.

Whitinger later got together with Dwight
Johnson and in 1998 they redesigned
Three Point’s, redubbing it LinuxToday.
When Internet.com took note of the
site’s success and purchased it from
Whitinger and Johnson in October of
1999, one of Whitinger’s conditions was
that he’d be “free to go off and not be
a part of LT anymore.”

Whitinger went off and started a few
“less glamorous” sites: Linevents.com,
Lintraining.com and Linsight.com.
Linsight’s been absorbed into the other
two sites, which are still being updated
daily. Whitinger’s marketing talents
were evident with the early publicity he
snagged for Linsight. In a January 2000
Linux.com interview, he cited links from
Netscape.com, Internet.com, Yahoo!, Wide
Open News, and others.

Another popular Linux news site, Linux
Weekly News was “let go” by
former sponsor Tucows.com last October,
after being picked up by the software
download site in April 2000. Tucows cited expenditure cutbacks in a
faltering Internet economy as the
reason for its divestiture of LWN, which itself warned that it was in danger
of disappearing entirely from the Net
if it couldn’t come up with salary
money. “The online advertising market
is difficult, to put it mildly, and
attempts to turn up corporate
sponsorships have not been successful,”
wrote the editors.

After making a plea to the
community and months of soliciting
suggestions and discussion, things must
be looking up for LWN, now that they can
afford to place Whitinger, a former
director of the Web technologies team
for Atipa, on staff. What does
being the director of business
development for LWN entail?

“In the
short term, I’ll certainly be pursuing
revenue in the form of advertising
campaigns with companies who would
benefit from exposure to the specialized
audience of LWN,” he says. Long term, nothing’s been
finalized. “We’re only now beginning to
discuss our plans.”