Tech news site PandoDaily is acquiring NSFW Corporation, the humor- and politics-focused publication founded by former TechCrunch columnist Paul Carr (pictured), according to a story in the Guardian.
The NSFW Corp team will reportedly form an investigative unit at PandoDaily, which will be renamed Pando.com. Like Carr, Pando founder Sarah Lacy left TechCrunch after Michael Arrington was pushed out by acquirer AOL. (In fact, PandoDaily launched on my first day at TechCrunch.) Both companies raised money from Arrington’s CrunchFund.
Carr had earlier written on Pando that he had to raise funding quickly to keep the company alive, an effort that he later said had succeeded.
In her own post about the deal, Lacy said that she isn’t just bailing out a friend:
It was NSFWCORP’s shift towards focusing on the rising power and influence of technology entrepreneurs that ultimately made this deal happen. At lunch a few weeks ago, Paul told me NSFWCORP was considering moving more aggressively in the direction of tech-related, long-form, investigative reporting. I was struck by how similar our editorial mandate was becoming. Stories like Silicon Valley’s increasing power in Washington and the NSA scandal were broadening our coverage at the same time NSFWCORP was seeking to narrow its coverage. We were meeting in roughly the same place.
By the way, when I emailed Lacy about the news, she wrote back that “there’s not a lot of truth to the meme that either of us ‘hate’ tc.”
Well, maybe we can agree that it’s a complicated relationship. When asked by the Guardian about the criticism that Pando panders to Silicon Valley (a criticism that’s certainly been directed at us, too), Carr replied, “If you want to see Silicon Valley friendly, go to TechCrunch and see press release after press release after press release written up by children.”