Nick Denton has been pairing down his blog empire lately, and the latest casualty is his Silicon Valley blog Valleywag, which he plans on folding into the foundational Gawker. Editor Owen Thomas will stay on to write for the site, which is keeping its URL.

Denton however, is also selling off his Consumerist site, and earlier this fall made cuts all across his blogging board.

At least this works as a good argument for Ron Rosenbaum's fight against Jeff Jarvis: It's not just print journalism and "old media" feeling the pinch in this economy. Successful blogs and online ventures are just as susceptible to the stillborn market right now. What happened to new media being the new economy?

"Why bother?" says Paul Boutin of Valleywag, in response to anyone thinking of starting their own blog, "The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter."

Sort of reminiscent of Tracy Morgan on 30 Rock when he became a Republican and did a PSA discouraging African-Americans from going to the polls because "you could play two games of pool in the amount of time it takes to vote."

Because hey, the industry is tough right now, and Boutin would much rather the young generation spend their A.D.D. addled brainpower engaging in online activities that have no chance of ever competing in the Internet blog industry. When was the last time you heard anyone besides Mark Zuckerberg getting famous off of Facebook.

Digg, that site you’re always hearing is important but don’t really understand why, might finally be sold.

Word on the street is that a major media player is set to buy the link sharing site for $300 to $400 million. While that number might seem a little 1999, Digg recently signed a $100 million multi-year ad deal with Microsoft.

Over at Valleywag, they’re guessing that the media player in question is the Washington Post Co., which already has ties with Microsoft through Slate. Well, Digg couldn't be any worse of an investment than About.com.