Business Insider’s Owen Thomas Is In Talks To Be The New Editor At ReadWrite

My old boss Owen Thomas is very close to becoming the new editor-in-chief at the SAY Media-owned tech site ReadWrite, according to sources with knowledge of the company. I’m hearing that it’s not quite a done deal, but that it’s looking very likely.

Naturally, I called Owen to ask if this was the case, but he declined to comment. A SAY spokesperson told me, “There’s obviously a lot of interest in ReadWrite. There are a lot of good candidates in the mix, and no one’s been hired yet.” (Just to reiterate — I’m not saying he’s been hired, just that the discussions are pretty far along.)

Owen may still be best known in startup circles as the former editor of Valleywag. He’s currently the West Coast Editor at Business Insider, and he was also the founding editor at The Daily Dot, executive editor at VentureBeat, editorial director at NBC, and a reporter/editor at Business 2.0. He’s definitely drawn his share of controversy (I was working for him at VentureBeat when Elon Musk called him “the Jayson Blair of Silicon Valley”), but he’s also a funny, well-connected writer, and an editor who I learned a lot from.

Earlier this month, we got the scoop that then-EIC Dan Lyons was leaving for marketing software company HubSpot.

Update: After the post went up, SAY VP of Social Ted Rheingold called to reiterate that it’s “a very open position with lots of interest and lots of candidates.” It sounds like I may have been a little premature in saying “probably” in the headline, so I changed it to “in talks.”