The battle against press release-based news.

The Atlantic Wire, demonstrating its own growing ability to offer valuable original content, recently ran a piece about Gawker Media founder Nick Denton's reading habits.

While the piece is itself interesting in a voyeuristic, what-does-the-gossip-merchant-read kind of way, what's most notable is Denton's ability to portray his reading habits as a reflection of the publishing business at large.

He says to John Hudson:

I learned the news business in the UK, in which newspaper political coverage is much like cable TV news in the US. Fake news, manufactured, hyped, rehashed, retracted -- until at the end of the week you know no more than at the beginning. You really might as well wait for a weekly like the Economist to tell you what the net position is at the end of the week.

To follow the daily or hourly news cycle is the media equivalent of day-trading: it's frenzied, pointless and usually unprofitable. I'd much rather read an item which just showed me the photos or documents. And if you're going to write some text, take a position or explain something to me. Give me opinion or reference; just don't pretend you're providing news. That's not news.

Immediately before this excerpt, Denton says, "Journalists pretend that these official statements and company press releases actually constitute news."

That might sound surprising from the fellow who publishes Gizmodo and Gawker, both which post endless streams of spokesperson-originated news. But consider that Denton has been pushing for original content since the very beginning. (Exhibit A: Elizabeth Spiers' "Coke - The Perfect Dealer" on a very young Gawker site.)

The difference, in my opinion: he recognizes that limited resources and a 24/7 news cycle require some of this pandering. (One major difficulty of a website: there's no "next issue" on which to wait. Denton can't afford to have everyone off crafting an opus when there are 40 posts to manufacture for eyeballs that are already waiting for them.)

On the other hand, now that Denton's company is growing in size, success and reputation, that's precisely why you see exclusive news scoops and a healthy dose of assigned -- yes, assigned -- feature writing.

Mainstream news organizations got it wrong. It wasn't the aspect of blogs repurposing their original reports that was the threat. It was blogs creating a voice around them, a style, and then building an audience from it.

What big news organizations didn't see coming was that some blogs would gain enough success (and resources, and reputation) to eventually challenge their ability to provide content with value.

Nick Denton: 'Flat Is The New Up? We Should Be So Lucky'

Gawker Media head Nick Denton has a lot to say about this recession we're in, and much of it is worrisome.


A concise, backed-up take on what Denton thinks is going to happen to Online Media in coming quarters:

To judge from a hysterical press, one might think the apocalypse was already upon the media industry: rolling cuts this month at Time Inc., the hallowed magazine group; a new catchphrase among advertising pundits, flat is the new up; and revisions even of the internet advertising that was supposed to be the salvation of the media industry. J.P. Morgan's Imran Kahn just slashed projected growth next year of US online display advertising from 16% to 6%.

We should be so lucky. These supposedly brutal layoffs at Time and other titles amount to only 6% of headcount at the bloated Time Warner magazine group. Other media groups such as the New York Times and Conde Nast—a hiring freeze, how callous!—are being even more squeamish. From conglomerates to internet ventures, executives should be planning now on a decline of up to 40% in advertising spending during this cycle. Instead they're sleepwalking into economic extinction—even those lean online ventures which were supposed to take up the mantle and preserve New York's position as a media capital.

His Machiavellian take to online publishers? Plan for the worst - now. How? Six ways:

1. Get out of ad-averse topics like politics
2. Renegotiate vendor contracts
3. Consolidate titles
4. Offshore more
5. Variable compensation
6. Offer more value for marketers
   

I don't agree with everything here, but Denton makes a good greater point: changes must happen soon, and they must be educated.

Read the post: Doom-mongering: A 2009 Internet media plan

BREAKING: RADAR Magazine Folds, Again

Just like a few years ago, the re-re-relaunch of RADAR....has ended.

The New York Observer has it:

A source at the magazine and Web site Radar has just confirmed to Media Mob that the magazine is closing up shop, and that everyone has to clear their desks out by the end of the day. (Ed.: We'll keep updating in this space.)

We hear that there might a business arrangement to keep the web site afloat and that it will be sold to AMI.

Started by Maer Roshan in 2003, the magazine billed itself as a guide to pop culture, scandal, and style but soon folded. In 2005, Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman and a pre-scandal Jeffrey Epstein invested a reported $25 million in the magazine according to a report by Katharine Q. Seelye in The New York Times, but by December of that year, the magazine had been shut down again. By this time, Radar's ups and downs had become sport for Web site's like Gawker, which delighted in every gory detail of the magazine's demise.

There's a warning shot to all magazines and wannabe magazine journalists -- no one's safe.

UPDATE 12:30pm: The layoffs include former Gawker editors Alex Balk and Choire Sicha.

UPDATE 12:59pm: In another sign of the times, Radar's website survives.

(Ed's note: That's not the only sign. Another recent example is the e-mail newsletter of Ed2010, a great online resource for magazine jobs and internships. For a string of several days this week, the newsletter hasn't had a single lead on a job to post, and has been begging its readers for leads. An unprecedented event.)

Are Gawker Bloggers Real Journalists? (updated)

Sharon Waxman on the latest Gawker Media layoffs:

"So, now Nick Denton is laying people off, just like those dinosaurs in mainstream media.

The difference is, mainstream newspapers fired real journalists.

What the Gawker empire represents is as transitory as the people he employs. Denton has indisputably proved that you can create a lucrative business model out of highly targeted blogs, fed by tightly managed staffs of journalists who've numbed themselves to nagging doubts that what they do every day is journalism."

Her analysis is sobering. Does working for Gawker Media make you less of a commodity in the journalistic marketplace? More of one?

Or does it even matter, since Gawker Media employees embody the Web-based change that's staking MSM and the printed word? (Are they redefining the journalistic workforce marketplace altogether?)

UPDATE: Jobs: The Gawker Guide to a Journalism Career.

BREAKING: Valleywag, Consumerist lose editors

Originally posted at ZDNet.com's The Toybox.

A source close to Gawker Media informed me a moment ago that popular sites Consumerist, Valleywag and (NSFW) Fleshbot will may be shuttered will lose most of their editorial talent.

"Nineteen jobs will be cut," my source says, with a formal announcement from Gawker Media coming later this afternoon. (UPDATE: Valleywag has already posted notice. Managing Editor Owen Thomas has laid off associate editors Nicholas Carlson and Jackson West and reporter Melissa Gira Grant.)

An internal e-mail circulated through the Gawker pipeline just 30 minutes ago:

I have some bad news. Here's the heart of it: we are cutting 19 of our 133 editorial positions and suspending bonus payments at the start of next year. With the savings, we are increasing base pay and hiring 10 new people on the most commercially successful Gawker sites. But I know that's scant consolation for the colleagues we're losing and for those of you who have been enjoying the bonus windfalls from breakout stories.

You can guess the reason for these brutal measures: the recession. Sure, the company is currently profitable and advertising sales are up by about 30% on their level of a year ago. Our biggest clients are consumer electronics and entertainment companies that are relatively well insulated. And, yes, this is not the first time I've predicted doom: in July 2006, when we "battened down the hatches" and closed down Sploid and Screenhead; and in April this year, when we spun off Idolator, Gridskipper and Wonkette.

But now the credit crisis is clearly going to affect every sector of the economy. Advertising buys typically plunge after the Christmas shopping season, and 2009 is obviously going to be exceptionally difficult. We have to prepare for the worst, now, rather than when the worst comes upon us.

We never used to talk about the business side of the operation. Traffic was the only concern; my belief was that juicy news would draw the readers and the advertising would take care of itself. We were patient; even if it took four years for a site to develop the audience that finally registered with advertisers, we had the time. No longer.

Sites such as Consumerist, whose success has been measured more in traffic and recognition than in revenue, now need to cover their costs. I can't underline enough that this harsh commercial judgment is no reflection whatsoever on the editorial teams that are being cut.

Each of these sites performs a vital function. Consumerist provides an outlet for disgruntled consumers that exists nowhere else on the web; Valleywag has given puffed-up Silicon Valley the prick it's long needed; and Fleshbot manages to be classy and filthy at the same time. The site leads and writers on all of our sites have done exactly what we asked them to: work harder than the competition and grow the audience. It's my commercial judgment that's been at fault.

One reason we're eliminating these positions is to reinforce the teams on the sites with the most commercial appeal—Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker and Gawker—and the properties such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Jalopnik which are poised to join them.

One new recruit we're confirming today is Gabriel Snyder from W Magazine in Los Angeles who, as managing editor of Gawker.com, will continue the site's evolution into a national news and entertainment site. We are also hiring new contributors at Jezebel, Deadspin, Kotaku and io9.

Even in the growing editorial teams we need to control costs. And that means a new look at traffic bonuses. We've been spending $50,000 a month on average on pageview bonuses. The scheme has made writers hustle for traffic even in teams so large that there was a risk they become lumbering. It's helped us hit a record 274m pageviews last month, up 69% on last September.

Pageview bonuses will continue this quarter. And we are committed to pageview incentives, and to measuring performance by a writer's individual pageviews, in the long term. But a first quarter spike in traffic — and the resulting bonus payments — could be dangerous if advertising markets are troubled next year. And we're assuming that the economy is so volatile that most of you would like a little bit more predictability about your own income.

That's why we're suspending the pageview bonus for the first quarter at least, but making up for some of the loss of income by raising pay. If you haven't recently agreed to a new rate, your monthly base amount will automatically be increased by 5% in January.

The news about the job and bonus cuts will be demoralizing. The golden age of the blog is over, people will say. Gawker Media is behaving like those big media companies that we mock so easily. I could come up with some bullshit line about how much worse it would have been to wait until we were forced to control costs; or how much more unpleasant life will be at the many internet ventures and newspapers that won't make it through the downturn. I could give you my optimistic spin about the glorious future that awaits us on the far side of this downturn.

But there is no escaping the fact that we're losing some excellent colleagues and the environment next year will be bleak. The one consolation is that there will be plenty of news for us to break — starting with this email, which you are free to leak.

Radar's Choire Sicha -- previously the editor of Gawker, among other things -- is on the case, too. So's CNET's Caroline McCarthy on The Social blog.

UPDATE 2:26 PM: Word is that it's unclear whether the sites will be shuttered or merely just scaled back to a minimum workforce.

UPDATE 2:44 PM: A different source says the sites are not getting shut down but will have considerable layoffs. (Update 3:00PM: Gawker Media managing editor Noah Robischon confirmed that no sites will be closed but there will be layoffs.)

What I'm wondering is: What's [publisher Nick] Denton's thinking? He's cutting back on Valleywag but putting even more resources into the traffic-leading Gizmodo site (and Kotaku, and io9, and Jezebel). Is he simply fattening the chickens before he sends them to slaughter -- in this case, to an online suitor for sale? (Just today, Gizmodo solicited help from readers to find open gallery space in NYC. Do I smell a gadgety, co-branded, moneymaking event?)

How To (Not) Write A Press Release

I've always wanted to write this, but it looks like Hamilton Nolan at Gawker beat me to it:

• Have news: When you sit down to write a press release, ask yourself, "Is this really news?" If the answer is no, get up from the table without writing the press release.
  
  
• 5WPR: Ha, that's a little play on words on our part. It means that PR people should put the five W's into their press release right up top: "Who, what, when, where, and why." It also will help you remember not to act like the actual Ronn [sic] Torossian-led agency called 5WPR, in which the five W's stand for "What? Whoa. Wow. Who would" ever hire this incompetent PR firm?
  
  
• Do nothing until we call you: Here's what most reporters (who aren't total hacks) do with a press release: skim it for the five W's (SEE ABOVE), then look at the bottom to find the contact number for the flack. You think we want to pull the robotic quotes that you wrote for your CEO right out of that wretched press release and put them in our stories as if he actually said them? Fuck you! We want to call you and harass you and ask you a long series of questions until you cough up a quote suitable for being read by human beings. And we want it now! Night shift, day shift, wire reporters—everybody is on deadline for right now, meaning that you, the flack, must be available to talk about it right now. Do not go pee. Sit by the phone and await our call! (Of course if you actually do have big news, all the reporters will patiently wait our turn like the bootlickers that we are).
  
  
• Make sure all the shit in it is right: If we pull something directly out of a press release and put it in a story, and it then turns out to be wrong, we will cry and cry. Then blacklist you. The belief that reporters double-check basic facts in press releases is a myth.
  
  
• No free stuff: This one is counterintuitive. In fact, plenty of companies send freebies ranging from t-shirts to tickets to liquor with their press kits, and it works beautifully. I guarantee it will increase your pickup. I also guarantee that it will slowly, almost imperceptibly, contribute to the erosion of a strong and independent news media, able to stand apart from the corporations it covers and deliver a judgment with only the public interest in mind. Of course, flacks don't really want a media like that, so you will continue to send free swag, and reporters will continue to eat it up. But think of THE PEOPLE, and refrain. It's the right thing to do.

Harsh, yes; exaggerated, true; but having worked on both sides of the fence, I agree wholeheartedly.

BREAKING: Gawker Media To Sell Off Wonkette, Idolator, Gridskipper

As per an internal Gawker Media notice:

IDOLATOR is going to Buzznet, a music-focused web and social
network. Buzznet recently acquired Idolator's chief rival, Stereogum,
and received a big investment from Universal Music Group.
* GRIDSKIPPER isn't going far: it's being taken over by Curbed, the
network founded by Lockhart Steele, in which Gawker Media is a
shareholder.
* WONKETTE is being spun off to the managing editor, Ken Layne, former
founder of one of the web's very first news sites, Tabloid.net. The
title will become part of the Blogads network of political sites,
which includes Daily Kos, among others.

Why these three sites? To be blunt: they each had their editorial
successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the
advertising than we did.

Music audiences are fragmented across genres; Maura's Idolator gave
Stereogum a good run, but a group with a whole array of music sites
will command more attention from record labels than we could. In the
case of Gridskipper, our urban travel guide, we could never match
Curbed in attention to city-specific content and advertising. As for
Wonkette: political advertisers are a strange breed; they don't come
through the same agencies our sales people deal with.

So why not wait, at least till the election? Well, since the end of
last year, we've been expecting a downturn. Scratch that: since the
middle of 2006, when we sold off Screenhead, shuttered Sploid and
declared we were "hunkering down", we've been waiting for the internet
bubble to burst. No, really, this time. And, even if not, better safe
than sorry; and better too early than too late.

And, then, once this recession is
done with, and we come up from the bunker to survey the internet
wasteland around us, we can decide on what new territories we want to
colonize.

How Much Do Gawker Editors Get Paid?

A great and interesting piece about what payroll looks like from a "new media" blog-centric point of view from Felix Salmon on Portfolio.com. Read it!

BREAKING: Is Gawker Gaming Its Own System?

Gawker Media has never been a company to adhere to ethical standards or rules (with the exception of its liberal reader exit strategy). Now, it seems that all those readers/commenters who give Gawker its true "snark" are its very own interns [via former College Humorist jakoblodwick.com]:

me [Jakob Lodwick]: Nick.
me: pretend you're not talking to the world's slowest retard
Nick Denton: sure
me: none of them are real?
Nick Denton: no
Nick Denton: there are three or four real ones
Nick Denton: collegecallgirl is one
me: and the rest are interns.
Nick Denton: yeah
me: the commenters on gawker are employees of gawker media.
Nick Denton: not employees
Nick Denton: interns
me: pretending to be anonymous web jerks
me: you know that I'm going to post this conversation
Nick Denton: sure
me: and you don't care because...
me: ...because it doesn't matter.
Nick Denton: good night

Or as our mostly-absent columnist Mitchel Stevens summed up to me: "The 'elite gawker commenters' are all interns at Gawker. And have multiple accounts."

I've dispatched Stevens to troll the comments for the truth. If this really is the case, Gawker's falling even farther from becoming a legitimate media power.

UPDATE: Fascinating video about Denton from an old classmate. Not a lot of insight here, just well-chosen words -- including some choice examples about self promotion. See comment below.

Gawker Eds Jump Ship Without Life Preservers

Interesting news in digital journalism this week: Three editors at Gawker, the sarcasm-fueled gossip site, announced that they will be leaving the Gawker Media empire. This includes:

• Longtime managing editor and once-editor Choire Sicha;
• Gawker editor Emily Gould;
• and nightlife editor Josh Stein.

Why? Mixed reactions from the group -- some are tired of Gawker, some are tired of a 5-to-9 job and some just want to try something new.

The New York Observer reports that "Maggie Shnayerson, who started on Sept. 24, is now the longest-serving editor at Gawker." And I think that's a pretty interesting indicator as to the challenges Nick Denton and Co. face as a major employer of alternative journalists/editors/publishers/citizens.

Women's Wear Daily reported some chilling facts about an alternative media organization like Gawker: extremely limited upward mobility. Still.

"In my dreams I'm going to find a job reporting on fires," said Sicha. "But I'm a little creaky and old to do that." He added, "I just feel like, now that everyone sort of operates at the speed we do, who's actually going to do the stuff that takes some time or some reading?...Everything has become knee-jerk like we are." In other words, "There can be one TMZ, but if there are going to be eight TMZs, I want out."

Gould struck a similar note. "Whatever Gawker originally set out to do, it kind of did, and now it just feels over," she said. "I would love it if it just fell off the face of the earth....I don't want to say the meanest thing or the most shocking thing possible anymore, because it gets so old and so soul-killing. There is stuff I really care about. I'm not interested in tearing it down as much as describing it."

It's not only subject matter -- after all, the magazine business is known to be a revolving-door-type industry -- but rather there's nowhere to go. Gawker's been adding some lesser positions to it's portfolio of hired help, but for the most part, the people who leave haven't anywhere to aspire to get to. And there aren't exactly any companies quite like Gawker, either.

Why is this important, then? Because it shows that Gawker Media, despite its largesse, is still an alternative. No matter what they pay, or supposed benefits, or what have you, it remains an anomaly. When you're done with Gawker, you're probably done with the independent blog world, at least on the level of success you had at Gawker. Many editors -- say, Jessica Coen or Ana Marie Cox -- went on to MSM, Big-J employers and tried, sort of, to replicate what they were so damn good at on Gawker. But for the MSM-wary, few options remain. Gawker's still the top.

So where does Gawker fit in the grander scheme? It remains to be seen, although I would suggest that it's still a springboard for "bigger," "better," more mainstream media. But until it grows -- or a competitor does -- it's clear that Gawker alums will continue to walk through the revolving door at a rapid pace. Those that don't jump on the MSM bandwagon might just never be heard from again.

How NOT To Handle Being Attacked By Gawker: Steve Almond

It's Gawker week on The Editorialiste, folks. I can just feel it.

I just read a terrifying post on The Huffington Post by erstwhile author Steve Almond about how Gawker is somewhere along the lines of Sen. Joe McCarthy, Bill O'Reilly and Star magazine.

Star magazine, OK. But two of those three things, I feel, are amiss on that list.

In his post, Almond describes having no prior experience with the site until he got a heads-up that he's been the subject of a few posts. Evidently, this steamed him -- so much so that he quickly read the somewhat-maligned Grigoriadis-penned article that my dear guest columnist Mitchel Stevens referenced in his last post...and, now with a complete background in all-things Gawker, he wrote this scathing piece in HuffPo.

"They don't pretend to care about 'objectivity' or even accuracy for that matter," he writes, offering up a YouTube video of editor Emily Gould saying the same thing verbatim as proof. But then he reaches too far:

"Gawker readers remind me of all those aggrieved citizens who continue to fall for the GOP's hate campaigns -- and to vote against their own economic interests."

Now I'm no huge Gawker-waving fan, but these things are so far off-base that it made me cringe...and comment on his post. I couldn't stand reading something by someone who got steamed from getting attacked on Gawker and then strikes back without understanding what he's attacking.

Turns out the "pomposity" line in Gawker's post was prophetic.

To Almond's defense, he does get a few things right on the money: That "the payoff for Gawker bloggers is that they gain enough notoriety to land jobs within the media empires they claim to despise" and that the site is "an entirely amoral zone." But what he fails to do is raise any points about Gawker that haven't already been raised in every article ever written about the site ever.

Oh yeah -- and somehow, he equates it with the right-wing, and takes the high ground by signing off with the advice that we should be concentrating more on national issues than media-socialite-blather.

On this argument, I'm in Emily Gould's court. She's been forced to carry far too much responsibility for the misunderstanding (Gawker = McCarthy? Seriously?) of occasional readers. To me, it seems like the only person who's fear-mongering is Almond himself.

Mitchel Stevens’ Guide to Employment and Liveblogs

Editor's Note: The following column is part of an anonymous weekly humor column chronicling the struggle of a new, young journalist out in the working world. You may find the author's previous posts in the archives. --The Ed.

Hey gang. A funny thing happened on the way to the Internet today. It turns out that New York magazine ran a little feature this week on a certain lil’ snarky weblog-that-begat-all-blogs: Gawker (proper.)

Traditionally, this sort of “eye on the media” is left to The Editorialiste since this is what he goes to school for. However, we had a brief discussion and realized that this is in fact my area of expertise. You may say, “But Mitchel! How do you do media analysis, aside from poorly?”

And I say, “But reader! This revenge-feature is totally focusing on the common man affected and thus empowered by new media — eye ee, me, Mitchel Stevens. Do you see what I did there?”

And so, perhaps in homage to another great mind of our times, I have decided to liveblog my reading off New York magazine’s latest feature, “Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass.”

7:00 a.m.: Wake up. Mouth tastes like gin, again. Fuck. Promised self I wouldn’t do that on a Sunday night anymore. It’s not the good gin, either, but the shitty type that comes in the same bottle as the good stuff. Fuck. Head hurts.

7:30 a.m.: Wake up again after falling back to sleep. Mouth tastes like cigarettes, gin and ass. Ugh.

8:00 a.m.: Finally get out of bed.

8:05 a.m.: Do morning online job. Open Gmail.

8:06 a.m.: Open link to New York magazine piece.

8:08 a.m.: Wait, aren’t I the “creative underclass?”

8:10 a.m.: Jesus Christ, Vanessa “GRIG” Grigoriadis is a whiny person. I once worked as a researcher for her. Like talking to an early morning stoner.

---
SAMPLE:

MS: So, what are you looking for?

VG: Ok, so I need the stuff no one else knows.

MS: Ok.

VG: Seriously, the kind of things no one checks for.

MS: Ok.

VG: Stuff on message boards, on MySpace pages. If it’s on there, I need it.

MS: Ok. So mainly the Internet stuff.

VG: Yeah.

MS: Ok, got it.

3 DAYS LATER…

VG: Why did you forward me all these MySpace pages?

MS: You wanted the MySpace stuff.

VG: I already know this. God, listen, I need stuff from the MySpace pages that people don’t know about. I need the real stuff.

MS: …like?

VG: You know, the underground.

---

Right. OK, back to liveblogging.

8:12 a.m.: This entire opening is a disclosure about how THE GRIG was burned by Gawker and had to explain to her mother-in-law what a blog was? WTF.

8:13 a.m.: Maybe she forgot about how she exploited her husband’s own weight for a story. Hm, I wonder if her mother-in-law Googled that. (Totes via Gawker).

8:15 a.m.: “Like most journalists, I tend to have a defeatist attitude about Gawker, dismissing it as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 of journalism,” in the not too distant future, about 2007 A.D., there was a shitty trend piece, about bloggers like you and me….LA LA LA.

8:20 a.m.: blah blah blah, Gawker once was written by someone else... "Sicha, a handsome ex-gallerist who spends his downtime gardening on Fire Island, is generally warm and even-tempered, but on this last point, he looks truly disgusted. ‘Not a week goes by I don’t want to quit this job,” he says, “because staring at New York this way makes me sick.’” Ooh! How daring! Next week in New York magazine, people dislike their jobs! Followed the week after by: “My Husband Isn’t Fat Anymore and DON’T YOU GOOGLE HIM!!!!!” (By Vanessa Grigoriadis).

8:21 a.m.: Make coffee.

8:34 a.m.: Page two of the online article has Emily “Hey, guise, totally edgy since I give the middle fi—LOOK AT MY BREASTS. I AM NEEDY” Gould, Choire Sicha and Julia Allison. Is it bad I mock Emily? Shit, now I really feel bad. Because she’s moody, guys. Working is hard. Fuck. I feel bad. Sorry, Emily. I mean, I don’t mean to be bitchy. Your work is tough, I know. I freelance too. And blah blah, Josh made fun of Neal Pollack’s kid. Whatever, it takes a proud iPhone clad douche to knock on a little kid. But I really feel like a prick. I know the rooftop photoshoot was probably after days of convincing by Nikola “Teh L Magazine Greatest Photog” Tamindzic. And omg, all you ever knew how to do was write! Me too! Oh, man, I think we’d totally be friends. Do you notice how THE GRIG is making you out to be the human side of OMG GAWKER because you are the soulful one, Em. You’re totes the human side.

And you know, fuck Jimmy Kimmel fo…wait.

Wait.

Hold the fuck on.

9:20 a.m.: No, wait, it’s still there. You make $55,000 a year? Seriously. You make $55,000 a year, wrote a book and are complaining that you have to work? I understand you have to pay freelancer’s taxes. I know what that is. I get receipts every time I buy a MetroCard.

But you are COMPLAINING about making that much money? What the fuck? You’re like every other punk kid I knew: oh boo hoo, life is hard—except for this shit-load amount of money I make! Oh, life is hard! I need to go have appetizers at a classy restaurant! Life is pain! I need to have a Pink Panty Dropper.

9:24 a.m.: Seriously. WTF. Why don’t you complain about your job more.

9:26 a.m.: Yeah, Denton looks like Morrissey. Speaking of, why hasn’t Gawker posted about this yet?

9:30 a.m.: I’m on page 3 of the online article. What does this article have to do with the “creative underclass?” So far, this has been about THE GRIG being pissed her mother-in-law googled her son and blames THE GRIG. Not to mention—and I skipped ahead here—that THE GRIG made friends with Emily Gould and loves Choire Sicha’s sexy underwear. Well, we all love Choire’s underwear. It’s what we see when we “apply” for work at Gawker. Whatever.

But this article? It’s a pity. This is the prime example of old media trying attack online. Especially when online outlets such as this—and especially with the reasoning that Alex Balk didn’t mean to leave for Radar magazine, but was forced to leave regarding a post me made—show that online is indeed better.

Shit, I give up on this whole “liveblogging” thing. I can’t stomach THE GRIG’s story, nor how she attempts to humanize poor Emily as the scarred, lonely little girl in a big scary man’s second life. Maybe THE GRIG forgot that most people in media make below $28 K when it comes to work. After all, how much did she make for this corporate blowjob? Maybe she cut off some cash for her tubby hubby.

It should be no surprise that Gawker has yet to comment on the article that cites some in the office are drug users or like to have sex. What a shock! At least we know one thing—Richard Blakely, one of Gawker’s videographers, doesn’t wear tight white pants. Right, Alex Goldberg?

But I digress. I tried to get in contact* with the kids at Gawker in the interest of journalism and integrity and web 2.0. Sadly, no amount of uppers, downers or gin could attract Sicha, the guy with a Serge Gainsborough tat or Lil’ Miss “I make 55 K. SO DEPRESSING. WAAAAAAAAMBULANCE.”

Sigh. Anyway, the Gawker kids haven’t even discussed the piece on their site yet. So far it was just “omg, alex pareene is here. Omg, these things are going on. Omg, we are not going to acknowledge the 500-lb pink elephant in the room. Omg, CMJ is so totally for young people!”

Oh, Gawker. You’re so adorable. Like a $55,000 worth of adorable. But not nearly as adorable as how tubby THE GRIG’s husband is.

-MS

*Note: Mitchel Stevens did not try at all to talk to the editors at Gawker. In fact, he sort of just played Bona Drag for an hour, drank some gin and then sat around refreshing his Gmail while googling himself. Mitchel Stevens really didn’t feel inspired this time. Mitchel Stevens wants breakfast.

Newspapers Isolate Blogs, Readers

It's a new week here on The Editorialiste, but I'm still catching up to old -- but important -- news on the MSM/citizen journalism front.

One recent tidbit that really struck me was when Gawker's Choire Sicha (Choire, say hi to my old classmate Pareene for me) called out newspapers for sectioning off their blogs as a separate section and then expecting readers to want to read them. He writes in "The New Model: Newspapers Now Stuffed Full Of Blogs, But No Clue Where To Put Them":

"They're organizing by form, not by content. Readers just don't come to a newspaper's website looking for a messy passel of blogs. They come looking for sports, or fashion, no matter what 'form' it's in."

Because of this problem, most blog writers on newspaper sites end up giving their sermons to an empty house, he wrote -- and readers are at a loss for where to find 'em in the first place.

Just last week, I spoke with Philly.com President Eric Grilly, who was kind enough to give me a ring after my recent critique of the site's newest version. We spoke of many things pertaining to the site -- Grilly's all ears when it comes to ideas for the site, and he was kind enough to accept my full-blown, no-holds-barred critique of the site -- and one that I brought up was exactly Sicha's point: that the site sectioned off "Multimedia" and "Blogs" as a separate entity, without any cross-referencing in the sections they pertained to.

In this case, as in many others on newspaper websites, Philly.com readers looking for Eagles content need to go into two completely different sections to read the latest score and then read an Inquirer staffer's thoughts about it.

This reveals a lot about the new media mindset of the old newspapers: that is, the fact that the "blog" is a "hip," "new" asset to add to the web toolbelt, rather than a different publishing platform for similar content. So instead of integrating the blogs into the sections of the site, they're relegated as their own "look at us, we're so totally web 2.0 with our blogs and out multimedia" (which is really just a slideshow that can be applied to any article with photos attached to it).

So listen up, newspapers: Start asking someone who understands what a blog is and isn't for help in integrating them into your sites. You're already slimming your staff down; why would you waste the work of who's left to the big, empty web void?

Should A Journalist Use A Character?

Yesterday, I got into a discussion with my girlfriend about whether it was ethical, on a personal level, to assume a character for an op/ed outlet. This came about after I began guest-blogging at IvyGate, a satirical, Gawker-toned blog catering to the supporters and critics of America's top-tier schools.

I originally took the assignment on to pose as a nice change from the serious journalism I practice during the day at a major city newspaper. It was a fun change. But my girlfriend said she didn't like the tone that I used on the blog -- the satirical, lampooning one that's the blog's trademark -- because it didn't match my person.

Should a journalist assume a character for opinion? Is he or she then a journalist, or an actor?

It seems that this kind of issue wasn't a big deal in the past, but with the rise of digital citizen journalism -- that is, assuming anonymous pseudonyms to use a "different voice" or more, assuming it under one's real name and hoping the audience gets it -- I think it leaves the journalist in a bit of an ethical predicament: Be true to oneself, or be true to one's work?

If this were a case of violating personal beliefs, it would be much more clear-cut. But the nuance here is tone. Let's take an editor of Gawker, a popular satirical Manhattan media blog, as an example:

Doree Shafrir is a young, accomplished journalist who graduated from Penn and Columbia with journalism on her degree and has worked as the arts and entertainment editor at Philadelphia Weekly. Clearly, she's got the right experience. But when she writes on Gawker, she assumes the voice that Elizabeth Spiers and so many others have trailblazed -- snarky, unsympathetic and verging on offensive for the sake of being so. Is that the real Doree? Only her friends could tell you.

But does it denounce our trust in her as a journalist? Does Gawker hire jaded, angsty, ignorant editors who revel in writing personal attacks, or do they hire people capable of assuming that voice?

The same story goes for Ana Marie Cox, former editor of Wonkette. Cox wrote on Suck.com under a pseudonym, Ann O'Tate, and now works as Washington Editor for Time.com. In her Wonkette days, she often used such phrases as "ass fucking" liberally in her posts, and she's known to have gone after Sen. Mike DeWine for accepting money for sexual favors.

Does Cox really have a vendetta against DeWine? Or is she outing him like any other proper journalist would, but using sensational language to match the tone of her outlet?

Is it all an act? Is it allowed to be?

I think it's a fine line to straddle when one's true name is in the byline. Before and still today, writers assume pen names to create a barrier between their actual person and their 'character.' But in an age of citizen journalism op/eds, where the barrier can be implied by how outlandish the writing is, should the journalist be held accountable?

I, myself, don't know. I'm still thinking about the vague boundaries in this. And in real life, there's a lot of doubling-back: After Cox appeared on Don Imus' radio show, she wrote "I'm embarrassed to admit that it took Imus' saying something so devastatingly crass to make me realize that there just was no reason beyond ego to play along."

In other words, Cox thought Imus was racist or sexist or, at the least, overtly sensational. Which is often times what a Wonkette post can verge into, so long as it's equally offensive for everyone of all demographics.

So it brings me back to my main question: Can a journalist be an actor, assuming another voice, without repercussion? Is he or she allowed to if a disclaimer is placed up? Or will it always reflect on their person and past, present and future work? Are they even a journalist anymore once they've become an actor?

And most of all, does it violate a journalist's own ethics doing it?

I don't know. But I've got a lot of questions.

Why 'Gawker Media' Could Become True Journalism -- And How Nick Denton Is The Next William Randolph Hearst

Gawker recently announced the launch of its 14th blog, Jezebel, which will have a focus on "women, women's media and fashion." Its managing editor will be a Star/In Style vet, its editor will be a WSJ vet and its associate editor will hail from the offices of Elle.

But that's not the news. The real story happened on the same day, and stems from Gawker Media managing editor Lockhart Steele's words upon his departure from his own position, who mentioned that the new media institution is moving away from aggregating web stories and toward breaking original stories.

Wait....huh? Gawker breaking original news? What's next, a Gawker Wire Service for syndication nationwide (or, at least, in blue states)?

I don't know if the name "Gawker" and the phrase "breaking original stories" contrast for you like they do for me, but it's worth noting that behind its expansion, Gawker Media is slowly turning into the rogue, "gay," "virgin," "eunuch" of the MSM crowd (in their own words) rather than the blog crowd. What I mean to say is, Gawker Media is slowly changing its stance from MSM "opposition" to "alternative."

Gawker has always played off the audiences of MSM. For example, the flagship blog and its West Coast sister Defamer cover the Page Six/Us Weekly/In Touch/People beat; Wonkette covers The Politico beat; Gizmodo covers the Popular Mechanics beat; Valleywag covers the Wired beat; Jalopnik covers the Motor Trend beat; Consumerist covers the Consumer Reports beat; and so on. Its new blog does the same -- only this time, it's stealing directly from women's magazines, one of the biggest audiences in the media world.

Gawker Media style has always been 50 percent wrath and 50 percent news aggregation. And while they've done a great job diversifying their portfolio (and I'm calling a men's interest blog or a business-oriented blog as the next one out the door, you heard it here first), the real news is that Gawker is moving away from that 50 percent news aggregation.

What that means is, in effect, that Gawker Media is getting closer and closer to being the journalism outlet it so vehemently denies being. And that in and of itself is fascinating. Will Gawker start paying more to its editors for original content (any Gawker editor reading this is probably thinking, "Not on your life if Denton's still in charge")? Will there be less stress on posting 20 posts a day and more stress on posting original content? Will there be Gawker people out in the field -- dare I say GM reporters?

I'm getting ahead of myself, of course. But you get the idea. Gawker Media readers already depend on the company for its signature vitriol. Will it depend on it for content, too?

Furthermore, Gawker Media sites would become more like MSM -- original content and aggregated content when needed (like the AP, but without paying for it). But this is a whole new brand of journalism, effectively digital yellow journalism: Original opinion mixed with original stories.

On this kind of path, Nick Denton would be the next William Randolph Hearst, the next Joseph Pulitzer, the next Rupert Murdoch -- a man with an army of niche publications tweaked for the popular masses.

I don't expect the shift to happen quickly. Gawker Media still has a lot on its plate. But if that's the direction the company's headed -- original content -- its editors' cries of "not journalists!" may soon ring hollow.