John Gruber's remembrance of Om Malik

John Gruber’s tribute to Om Malik, who died on June 24 after a long fight with a failing heart. It’s a piece about a twenty-year friendship, but also about the path both men walked: Malik went from “the bloggiest of quick-trigger bloggers” running GigaOm to, after a heart attack at 42 in 2008, the éminence grise of tech journalism — trading documenting what happened for explaining why, then joining True Ventures in 2014 while somehow staying on Apple’s short list of keynote invitees for another decade.

The thread that lands hardest is the one closest to my own corner of the web. Gruber recalls Malik, circa 2006, telling him to just keep doing what he was doing rather than chase a byline at a legacy publication: “Establishment media was a bloated slow-moving mess… The future, he was absolutely certain, would be controlled by creators building their own brands and reputations.” And then: “You don’t need them. They need you.” Two decades on, that reads less like a prediction than a description.

The footnote is worth keeping on its own: Gruber is grateful he told Malik how good his recent writing was before learning how sick he was. Don’t hold back on telling people they made something you love.