Willamette Week (Re)Launches Cool Stuff: Our New, Online Shopping-Focused Web Column

People of Portland: It’s time to save a couple of bucks. We’re bringing you deals, product reviews and other news about buying stuff.

By Walker MacMurdo

Dear Readers-

Over the summer, you may have seen some of Willamette Week’s posts about outdoors gear, making coffee at home and beer glasses over the summer. We called these posts “Cool Stuff,” and the goal is to bring you the best in online shopping.

If you liked that, I have good news. For the next few months, we’re going to be posting new content about shopping and e-commerce every dang weekday. Cool Stuff is back, and we’re going to be publishing regular content devoted to online shopping, product reviews and roundups of popular goods.
We’re bringing ’em to you!
We kicked Cool Stuff 2.0 off this morning with my roundup of smartphone mounts, which are even more useful than they were before October 1, when it became illegal to touch your phone (on pain of $1,000 fine) while you’re driving.

Related: Don't Want to Get Fined $1,000? Get a Smartphone Mount.

As we progress through the holiday season, we’re going to be bringing you much more than just product roundups. We’ve got a crack team of writers who are passionate about the outdoors, fashion, cosmetics, technology, books and other stuff that you just so happen to have to pay money for in order to enjoy. We’re going to be writing in-depth product reviews of hiking shoes, deodorant, backpacks, cookbooks and more throughout the coming weeks. What’s more, WW is going to get access to special deals and discounts for our readers, which is going to make getting through the holidays a little easier on your wallet.

Let me spell it out for you: We’ve got deals coming your way!

Some of you may be wondering: Why is Willamette Week writing about buying stuff now? We set up relationships with online retailers including Amazon, Nordstrom and eBay. Those websites hire special, tiny wizards that live inside of certain links on our website, which lets them know if you make a purchase from those websites after visiting WW. If you do, WW may receive a commission from those websites. We get paid, which helps us continue to let you know fund our hard-hitting journalism. You get some nice stuff for a good deal. We get to tell you when some teens burn down the Columbia Gorge. Everyone goes home happy.

But, Cool Stuff is not sponsored content. We aren’t paid by brands to write about their products. All of our reviews and roundups are as editorially independent as our food or music reviews, and if something we write about has issues or simply isn’t good, we’ll let you know. We will also be ending all of our Cool Stuff content with a disclaimer, letting you know that we may get a little somethin’ if you end up buying from one of our partners. It’s going to look like this:

(Cool Stuff is a new feature at Willamette Week where we feature product reviews, roundups, sales and other commerce and shopping-oriented content. All Cool Stuff reviews are editorially independent, meaning we provide honest reviews and aren’t paid by the brands we write about. If you do choose to purchase something after following one of our links, Willamette Week may receive a commission, which helps fund our journalism.)

And don’t worry, we aren’t just going to be telling you to buy stuff from massive corporations. As always, we’re going to keep our focus on Portland, and we’ll be writing plenty about Portland-based businesses.
So, welcome to Cool Stuff. We’re going to be posting new content every weekday morning, so keep an eye out around 7:30 am for new content. And as we learn about what the people of Portland are interested in buying, we’ll be adjusting our content to make sure you get to read more about what you want. We look forward to bringing you new, cool stuff to read about every weekday.
Through the roof!

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