They could have taken their marketing budget and spent it on those two sites and drawn a real audience. Which is what it needed. Suck and Feed had basically ignored the lessons of the last few years. They came from a magazine base and never reevaluated how they dealt with the reader. Slashdot and FC changed the rules.
Readers like to rant.
Even Slate understood that. That model may have worked, but it works no longer. It may not work in the future, but for now, the days of working beyond the reader's reach is gone online. If you post, people want to comment. They never understood how to get an audience, sell that audience and make that audience work for them.