Originally posted on hybrid forum, moving relevant parts here - interested in people's thoughts:
Me:
I recently realized that one of the reasons (among a number of others) that I haven't done anything with my site for so long is that doing anything for my site takes more time than I have - I use the hybrid news thing with some customizations to try to make it feel more like a true site than a blog, worried about flashy widgets and such - what I think I really should do if I'm ever to get back to writing online is adopt a simple, more classic blog type field so the majority of effort/time I spend on it is the writing and not all that goes into getting it online with bells and whistles
So the point I'm finally getting around to is that I think it would be great to have a Hybrid child theme with similar style & functionality to Gawker media sites (http://gawker.com, http://deadspin.com, http://lifehacker.com, etc) - these sites each run on the same them/architecture, are easy to read, simple, attractive and functional. I know any theme could be developed with hybrid and perhaps an existing child theme could serve as a basis from which to begin, but returning to my original problem, I don't have the time to try it myself and realize that there are likely a lot of other hybrid users who might really be interested in such a format
Personally, I don't like the format their sites at all so I wouldn't want to build a theme like theirs.
More than that though, building a theme like that requires a lot of end user responsibility. There's so many dynamic areas of their sites that need special attention when creating a post that it wouldn't be worth a developer's time to create something so difficult to use and support.
That said, if anyone else thinks it's worthwhile then they'll take a stab at it.
Kyle D:
Ya, that's the main drawback for me as well - I'm just not a fan of the Gawker format.
Catsandbeer - maybe you'll luck out and find someone who is willing to give it a go - it would be a great learning opportunity for both Wordpress and Hybrid.
I'm not a fan at all of the Gawker sites either.
I'd recommend throwing the idea out there in the Ideas forum. Maybe someone will pick it up and make a similar theme