How many people other than you did Scott Moore call to ask they post this crap about him anyway?

Scott Moore and even the affable Neil Budde are just two empty suits who stood on the backs of smarter people who came before them years ago or who work (organizationally) beneath Scott now or who he forced out of the way (Ask Brown or Budde or Broady or Barath if they were forced out or not by Moore).

Other than scheme and get promoted Moore has done zero at Yahoo except not screw up the hard work done by others before he or Budde or Braun arrived.

So far, Moore and Budde created soft news ideas that sucked up precious resources but went nowhere - ZERO - in terms of PVs or UUs or business metrics.

BOTTOM LINE: Moore and Budde did nothing but hold the job while the redesigned Yahoo home page pumped 10X more page views from the homepage into Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance!

Budde, meanwhile, has spent more time lecturing and being on the ONA board and being everywhere looking for a new job except being inside his newsroom in the last 12 months: Budde had more than a dozen staffers he had NEVER even met! Lots of uncomfortable silence in the elevators when he got on and didn't know his own team...

As for Moore's track record at Yahoo! News and Information to date - you decide:

Nepotism: Guess how many (truly qualified or not) husband-wife teams has he hired at Yahoo! to date?

Cronyism: How many former friends has Moore hired or done business dealings with so far?

Succession planning: : Are any of Scott's direct reports capable of holding his job? Um, not anymore.

Competency of his team: How much experience does his GM of Yahoo! have in journalism? ZERO! Moore's new editor in chief has less experience in online news than the newest person on his demoralized staff and he has no idea what the word heuristics means, has NEVER been inside a usability lab, knows nothing about UER or Agile/Scrum, Online Style, etc.

Finally: Remember Yahoo! News Underground - led by BeltwayBoy (see his comment above)? Ever heard of You Witness News? How about People of the Web? Then there are countless media content deals that were done for the buzz and vp ego trip but never produced real results.

One last thing: Sue Decker, Jeff Weiner, Jerry Yang, Terry Semel - we think they all read everything published here about them via their PR babes and we sure don't want them to miss this comment...

Mr.Spin

specialdarkness

All of the things you say above about Moore, are actually things that could be said about Vince Broady, who clearly stifled the growth of Yahoo Entertainment with an oppressive, polarizing management style and the mis-guided, expensive and go-nowhere initiatives (brand universe, chiefly) that set his main properties back years. Amazing Yahoo took this long to figure that out, but it is a good thing they did. This has been a dark and lost period at Entertainment to be sure. Moore will clean that up.

whooyah

Scott was advising Bill Gates & Steve Ballmer on their MSN content & monetization strategy at a time when MSFT was uncertain if they were a software or media company. Who could blame him for following his passion for media and joining Yahoo? I bet Bill & Steve wish they still had Scott at MSN, although Redmond does deserve props for their Rock Star: Supernova project with CBS & Live Earth on MSN.

Scott hardly suffocates his workers. If I had to come up with something negative to say about Scott it would be that he gives his employees too much independence because he trusts them to make the right decisions. Isn't that what we all desire? A boss who hires you to do your job and trusts you in the position you fill? A boss is also supposed to set milestones and ensure their employees deliver. If they aren't, a stern exchange would be in order. I had a few meetings with Scott where my work didn't meet expectations and I was suitably reprimanded. Those were invaluable lessons and my work was better because I learned from his experience in business at levels I aspire to.

C'est la Vie.

beltwayboy

mediahub