The tech, blog and vlog worlds have been turned upside down today with news that Amanda Congdon is leaving RocketBoom. The news was apparently broken this morning by Congdon herself who left a video post on her own blog explaining that, in her words, her partner in RB Andrew Baron simply didn’t want to be her partner anymore. A good number of bloggers ran with the story based solely on that. Congdon = good and Baron = bad in most of their posts.

As with any major news story, the reality of the situation isn’t always right there on the surface, though. Soon word came from Baron that he learned of Amanda’s departure via the video and was as surprised as anyone. Matthew Ingram provides a bit of context for this side of the story. According to an email exchange he had with Baron, Congdon had been wanting to move from New York to Los Angeles for some time. He and the rest of the Rocketboom team had been working on a way to make that happen but, according to him, Congdon decided to make this move unilaterally. That leaves him and the rest of the team to figure out what to do next.

There’s plenty of speculation about what the next step for both Congdon and RocketBoom will be. Will Congdon go mainstream on TV? Will RocketBoom hire an unknown redhead as a change of pace? Thankfully both parties have Robert Scoble’s support. Speaking of Scoble, Om Malik thinks he should hire Congdon for PodTech.

Here’s my question: How many people who consider themselves big shakers in the blogosphere ran this story before trying to get a reaction from Baron or at least waiting until they found one somewhere else? That sort of context is what I thought we were supposed to be doing on blogs. That’s what set us apart – I thought – from the evil mainstream media that was simply concerned with ratings. Instead, though, it seems all we’re worried about is Technorati timestamps.

–Chris Thilk

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