Rachelle's Reading List: Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Brian Williams is ex- BFF with Nick Denton. [Gawker] A word to the wise: don't ever send an email to Nick Denton that you don't want the whole world the remaining relevant readers of Gawker to read. Case in point: Bdubs Williams. Read the exchange below, posted by new reigning editor A.J. Daulerio:

Brian Williams Says Gawker Should Have Torched Lana Del Rey: "One Of The Worst Outings In SNL History" NBC's anchordude Brian Williams and blog villain Nick Denton are pals. They have mutual acquaintances, both love technology, pretty things, and email with each other like a couple of gossiping secretaries. Therefore, when Brian Williams offers critiques about Gawker's content, we are obligated to listen. See below. From: "Williams, BD (NBCUniversal)" Date: January 15, 2012 15:56:25 EST To: ND: I hope you're well. Happy New Year. A big congratulations to the new freelance weekend guy, Taylor Bernam. He's done some good posts right out of the box. I do wish the main page featured more TV coverage (Brooklyn hippster [sic] Lana Del Rey had one of the worst outings in SNL history last night — booked on the strength of her TWO SONG web EP, the least-experienced musical guest in the show's history, for starters). In my humble opinion as a loyal customer (you know I love you but the Blog View button will be the eventual cause of my death) and while I know you're in the midst of an editor change, weekends have been allowed to go awfully fallow — and it was a fallow holiday period for those of us who check your shit 10 times a day by iphone. I know you've been watching NBC Nightly News religiously each evening and I'll no doubt be getting a withering, detailed critique from you straight away. BW Noted. UPDATE: We then received this email from the frazzled PR team over there at NBC. From: M., Erika (NBCUniversal) To: Gawker Sent: Mon Jan 16 12:26:59 2012 Subject: Brian Williams Can you please have the post of Brian Williams' email to Nick Denton taken down immediately? That was sent in confidence as friends and absolutely never intended to be public. A speedy removal would go a long way in maintaining the trust and respect we have for your site.

To be fair to Williams, Lana del Ray really did suck on SNL this weekend.