Owen Thomas has stepped down from Valleywag in order to pursue a career at NBC.  Ryan Tate will be the official replacement for Thomas.  Thomas decided to leave because he misses managing his own website.

Tate has previous experience at Business 2.0 and Upside magazine.  He has actually been in the Gawker family for about a year now since he left the San Francisco Business Times.  Gawker is even looking for another editor for Valleywag  to run breaking news after 7PM Eastern time.  Valleywag was recently merged in to Gawker.com.

[via Valleywag]