It turns out that my report of the death of the CNET brand was premature, one of those consequences of my strategy of selective reading. What did die was Coop's Corner, Charles Cooper's "editorial department" on the CNET News Web site. Here is Cooper's own explanation:
Yours truly is moving over to work on the CBS News Web site, where I'll be working on a terrifically exciting project. There will be more to say about that at a later time. What's more, I'm not going to completely disappear from the map. Fact is that you will still see my byline gracing CNET News from time to time (CBS, you'll remember, owns CNET), though this will be it as a regular gig for Coop's Corner.
Cooper announced this on April 22; and my "Requiem" post appeared on April 23. He obviously did not waste any time getting started in his new location!
Nevertheless, one nagging question remains. How did a hyperlink to Cooper's "debut" for CBS show up on my Google Reader as a CNET News.com article? Is this an example of CBS, in its capacity as owner of CNET, exercising some form of droit du seigneur (with all the original connotations of that phrase attached)? Will we be seeing more CNET writers going over the wall to CBS and taking their links along with them? If so, then I would prefer to let CBS keep its Chutzpah of the Week award for this rather insidious refusal to let CNET be CNET and let CBS be CBS!
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