The Times uses the front page of the dining section this week to catch-up with Chowhound founder Jim Leff, who sold his company to CNET in March for an undisclosed sum (though we understand that it was low-seven figures) and has found himself away from his beloved message boards and dispatched on a cross-country food tour.
CNET Networks bought Chowhound from Mr. Leff and Mr. Okumura in March and has updated the archaic software and search features, which had made the site as difficult to navigate as a menu written in Uighur. Mr. Leff spent much of the last decade eating out or holed up in his Jackson Heights apartment posting thoughts on Salvadoran pupuserías and Korean kimchi places. Now the sale has freed him from day-to-day management of the site....Click through for a short history of message boards as well as a small but delectable window into Leff's questionable banning policies.Mr. Leff said his arrangement works like this: “Insofar as my input, there’s a lot of meetings where I’ll say, ‘I think we should do this,’ and they say, ‘I don’t think so,’ and I say, ‘O.K.’ ”
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