Valleywag Editor Owen Thomas is leaving the Gawker Media empire for greener pastures at NBC, according naturally to Valleywag.

Thomas joined Valleywag in 2007 from Business 2.0, and oversaw the demise of the site from a multi-person dedicated Silicon Valley gossip blog, to a column on Gawker.com that mostly covered Twitter posts and Julia Allison. Taking over from Thomas is Ryan Tate, who was previously Gawker’s night editor. Tate is reasonably well connected to the Valley, having studied at UC Berkeley where among other things he ran a campus newspaper.

The only surprise in Thomas’ move to NBC is that he didn’t move to TechCrunch, where his mix of tech gossip and Twitter would have been a perfect fit.

(image: Laughing Squid)

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No sooner had we hit publish on the possible Gawker cuts ahead post then we find the latest news. Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag is to cease as a stand alone site and will instead become a column on Gawker.

In traditional Gawker Media style, the genesis of the idea started with Valleywag editor Owen Thomas joking that he’d end up writing writing Valleywag as a column for Gawker yesterday. As Thomas notes in a post to Valleywag, Denton liked the idea so much, it’s now going to happen.

According to Silicon Alley Insider, the Valleywag brand will live on, but the column will reside on the Gawker.com URL. Thomas has also been demoted from Editor status to columnist. Not word yet on Valleywag’s two remaining writers, paid writer Paul Boutin and intern Alaska Miller, but we’re presuming both are likely to be dumped.

Vale Valleywag…sort of.

Related posts:

1. Owen Thomas leaves Valleywag for NBC
2. Gawker Media ad revenue up 39%, so Denton fires more people
3. Denton shuts Defamer as stand alone site, now part of Gawker