The Inquisitr » gawker media

Gawker Media Launches Video Site Gawker.TV

Duncan Riley — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:20:10 +0000

You know times are on the up when Nick Denton starts launching new blogs instead of flogging them off or shuttering them, and today Gawker Media turned the tide of the last 18 months with a new blog Gawker.TV.

Gawker TV offers a range of videos from the Gawker network, as well as content from around the web. According to the official pitch:

Amazingly cheesy 80’s and 90’s music videos, the best comedy sketches in existence, a daily wrap-up of what we’ll be watching every night, cute animal videos to make you smile, the best in fail videos, weekly how-to’s on a variety of subjects, wrap-ups of the week in video, the web shows that you should be watching, and always leaving you with a daily moment of WTF.

Gawker video producer Richard Blakeley is leading the site alongside Richard Blakeley and Whitney Jefferson.

As an add on for the Gawker network it will probably do well (nothing like an epic dose of leverage to help a new site along) although at the same time the content isn’t anything we haven’t seen on thousands of similar sites before.

NYT subtly frowns on Deadspin’s ESPN horndog dossier shenanigans

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:16:53 +0000

A new media campaign retaliating against ESPN for scandal related subterfuge got some old media attention today.

Deadspin, a Gawker media blog, gets oodles of sports and sportscaster news related tips and rumors in their inbox. Back at the beginning of September, Deadspin’s editor AJ Daulerio contacted ESPN for confirmation of the rumors swirling around Steve Philips regarding the unhinged intern (Brooke Hundley) that Philips totally turned out to be tapping. ESPN spokespeople were less than forthcoming about the brewing scandal, and Daulerio got scooped and got mad- so he decided to devote a day to posting all the tips he’d gotten regarding sexual impropriety at ESPN.

Daulerio tagged the entries “ESPN horndog dossier,” and posted rumors about Erik Kuselias, Stephania Bell, Jed Drake, Katie Lacey and David Berson. There was even a “glossary“ posted that gave a bit of background info on some alleged less savory seduction practices common at ESPN. The intended effect was swift and painful for ESPN- the names named by Deadspin showed up in the top results of Google searches frequently late last week and even prompted ESPN President George Bodenheimer to issue a memo asking staff to quit blabbing about the constant in-house boning to media.

The New York Times kind of chided the Deadspin for their “ESPN horndog dossier” today, and ESPN only commented in a statement, saying:

“Deadspin’s self-admitted rumormongering is despicable behavior by any standard and shows callous disregard for its impact on people’s lives. It is not worthy of response and those responsible should be called to account.”

Although the Times piece seems to imply that the posts were all rumor and supposition posted purely out of spite, quotes at the end not only lend credence to Daulerio’s sources, but also the reasoning behind the decision to go after ESPN in the first place:

But in the interview (with the New York Times), (Daulerio) said he adhered to the same standard of proof as any traditional news organization, repeating only those things told to him by multiple sources with close knowledge of the subject.

He and Nick Denton, owner of Gawker Media, said the larger issue was sources being dishonest with journalists. “When an unnamed source misleads, as far as we’re concerned, they lose the right to remain in the shadows,” Mr. Denton said in an e-mail exchange.

Daulerio also contends that none of the tips posted were kept under wraps very well anyway:

“Do I bend the rules a little bit? Of course I do. We’re still a blog at the end of the day, a Gawker Media blog. The larger truth out of this, outside of my temper tantrum over getting scooped out of a story, is that this is the worst-kept secret in sports media.”

What do you think? Questionable judgment, or epic win?

Eric Dane sues Gawker over McSteamy sex tape

Duncan Riley — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:27:51 +0000

Actor Eric Dane has filled suit against Nick Denton’s Gawker Media over Gawker’s publication of the now infamous
“McSteamy” sex tape.

According to TMZ, “Dane and and [partner Rebecca] Gayheart filed the lawsuit today in L.A. County Superior Court, claiming Gawker.com had not only unlawfully posted almost 4 minutes of the private video that was shot behind closed doors, but “maliciously” distributed the video and included nude shots of the fabulous threesome — the third wheel was former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche.”

The pair are asking for “more than $1 million in damages” and for the video to be removed from Gawker.

Nick Denton’s only response has been on Twitter, saying that “To quote the great Marty Singer — Eric Dane’s lawyer — if you don’t want a sex tape on the internet, ‘don’t make one!’”

Gizmodo, Gawker, i0, Jezebel, Consumerist up and down all day

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:11:33 +0000

Gawker media blogs and Consumerist have been experiencing intermittent outages today.

“Server issues” is being bandied about as a cause- Consumerist, a blog that was sold by Gawker Media in 2008, indicated as such at around 11:30am EST and since that post the blog has been unusually quiet all day. Gawker also addressed the issue at 2:47pm with a brief post entitled “If You Can Read This Post, You’re One of the Lucky Few.”

It always seems pretty pointless to put up a post on a website to say that that site’s down. But to state the obvious: all Gawker Media sites are having really bad server problems today. It’s not just you.

In addition to Gizmodo, Gawker, i0, Jezebel, and Consumerist; Defamer, Deadspin, Jalopnik, Fleshbot, and Kotaku are also having connectivity issues. Whatever the cause may be, here’s to hoping it gets fixed soon. In the absence of many of my favorite blogs I’ve cleaned a few things and returned some long-waiting e-mails and bring back my celebrity gossip, damnit! It feels like one of those summer days where everyone else ran off to the beach and you’re the only one in the office. Bummer.

How Gawker Media sells itself

Duncan Riley — Thu, 07 May 2009 07:06:52 +0000

Gawker Media has always been an interesting sales proposition in terms of breadth. While there are solid, safe titles like Lifehacker and Gizmodo, there’s the gossip sites and even the lite porn site Fleshbot. So how do you sell that?

We’ll if you’re Uncle Nick (Denton), you embrace your seedier side, and flaunt it in a video that concludes that Gawker’s model is the future.

All I have to say on this video is balls. Or to be more precise, what Denton has.

Owen Thomas leaves Valleywag for NBC

Duncan Riley — Sat, 02 May 2009 01:05:22 +0000

Valleywag Editor Owen Thomas is leaving the Gawker Media empire for greener pastures at NBC, according naturally to Valleywag.

Thomas joined Valleywag in 2007 from Business 2.0, and oversaw the demise of the site from a multi-person dedicated Silicon Valley gossip blog, to a column on Gawker.com that mostly covered Twitter posts and Julia Allison. Taking over from Thomas is Ryan Tate, who was previously Gawker’s night editor. Tate is reasonably well connected to the Valley, having studied at UC Berkeley where among other things he ran a campus newspaper.

The only surprise in Thomas’ move to NBC is that he didn’t move to TechCrunch, where his mix of tech gossip and Twitter would have been a perfect fit.

(image: Laughing Squid)

Denton shuts Defamer as stand alone site, now part of Gawker

Duncan Riley — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:41:43 +0000

Gawker Media’s Nick Denton has shut Defamer as a standalone site.

Defamer wasn’t named when Denton started making cuts to the network in November (we speculated it might be cut), but was said to be close to a sale late December when Consumerist changed hands.

Denton said in a statement that Defamer would become the entertainment column of Gawker, in the same way that Valleywag is now part of the site:

Gawker now draws more than 3m visitors a month — four times the audience it had in 2007. More than three-quarters of Gawker’s readership is from outside New York. The inclusion of Defamer’s Hollywood gossip — following an expansion of political coverage last year and the incorporation of Valleywag — reflects Gawker’s evolution into a national gossip site.

All three writers from the site are out of work, with Gawker staff taking over the writing duties, although Denton is looking to hire a gossip writer for the column.

Launched four years ago, Defamer delivers respectable traffic of 1.1m visitors a month for 5.9 million page views per Quantcast direct measure.

We don’t know yet how the announcement will affect Defamer Australia, the licensed Australia edition that like the other Gawker titles held by Allure Media, relies heavily on content from the original American sites.

Another consolidation as the wide blogging model slowly dies.

Consumers Union Acquires The Consumerist

Duncan Riley — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:33:12 +0000

The Consumers Union, the US based independent, nonprofit testing and information service for consumers has acquired Gawker Media blog The Consumerist.

The Consumerist, a blog dedicated to exposing consumer scams and bad company practices went up for sale in November, as part of broadsweeping cuts Gawker Media’s Nick Denton announced in front of his prediction of a 40% decline in online advertising in 2009. Rumors in early December had the site being sold to The Deal.

The deal is a win for Consumerist readers, with the editorial team remaining in place, and a new owner that respects the job the team does, one that doesn’t win many friends in the corporate world. The only change will be in advertising, the site will now exclusively advertise products from The Consumers Union. The NY Times notes that Consumers Union is seeking to attract younger readers with the buy, with the hope of eventually selling them online or print subscriptions to Consumer Reports.

The Times also reports that Defamer is close to being to being sold.

Huffington Post’s Syndication tricks come back to bite them

Duncan Riley — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:26:09 +0000

For most of this year, possibly longer, The Huffington Post has been syndicating articles on their site with links back to the original source. The general idea is to take 2-3 paragraphs from the original source, then link out at the end so that readers can continue reading the article on the original site.

I’ve always found the model interesting, but I also presumed that it was done with permission; we now run a small about of content here at The Inquisitr on the similar basis, although always with permission from authors upfront.

It turns out that The Huffington Post not only didn’t have permission, but at times were republishing full posts, not just extracts.

Chicagoland made the initial call out on content being stolen, then followed up with a pile of extra examples. Ryan Tate at Gawker calls the practice grubby.

Wired got comment from The Huffington Post, saying the examples of full content being used were an error, and that the syndication posts help promote sites and deliver traffic to the source. They also noted that the headlines also link to the source, at that 95% of the time readers never hit the extract page, instead going straight to the source.

It’s a double dose of copyright gray not well considered.

Running 2-3 paragraphs of a longer post with a link back may constitute fair use, but not adding to the content and running it whole (even if only part of the post) starts to get fishy on the fair use part, when considering that fair use in this context would normally be considered when quoting in the context of unique content.

I’m not about to widely condemn The Huffington Post for the practice, poorly played out as might have been the case, but it does very much surprise me that they didn’t attempt to obtain permission up front for printing the extracts; likewise I’m sure that it wouldn’t be hard for them to find willing partners who would welcome their content on The Huffington Post in this way, given the staggering amounts of traffic the site pumps through, where even a small cut of links could instantly deliver tens of thousands of page views each time a site gets linked to.

For others it is a lesson learned: when in doubt, ask for permission. We did.

Jossip Network shutters Mollygood, Stereohyped

Duncan Riley — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:37:54 +0000

The Jossip Blog Network has closed two long established blogs: Mollygood and Stereohyped.

Network owner David Hauslaib said in a note to staff that the sites were shutting due to the broader economic climate going in to 2009.

I can give you some bullshit speak to feed your “art of a layoff memo” meme (which I quite enjoyed), but basically, we looked at what 2009 is going to be like, and it isn’t pretty. Your own boss will tell you online media isn’t immune to the ad downturn. We’ve been very successful with all four sites — in terms of both economics and readership levels — and much consideration went into the decision, both personally and fiscally, but it’s a call that’s in the best interest of the company to move forward. It’s just shitty that the decision means we say goodbye to very creative and talented people. That said, we’ve got a few significant new things we’re working on with Jossip and Queerty, which, though Gawker might like to argue, are category leaders.

Jossip maints its original Jossip.com and the GLBT focused Queerty.

(via Gawker)

Report: Gawker’s “Consumerist” Closing In On Sale

JR — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:39:11 +0000

Gawker Media’s The Consumerist site is close to finalizing a sale, according to a recently published report.

The Consumerist, which was put on the auction block as part of Gawker’s overall cuts last month, is currently in “preliminary negotiations,” site editor Ben Popken told NetworkWorld.

NetworkWorld first noticed a tweet from Popken stating: “The deal closes in…” Upon further inquiry, he reports the following dialogue with Popken:

NWW: “Just saw your tweet. By ‘the deal’ do you mean ‘The Deal?’ Have you been sold? Are you close to being sold? Hope you find a nice home.”

BP: “Yep, The Deal. Preliminary negotiations, but things look good. The prospect is a good name everyone will be happy with.”

The Consumerist is averaging just under 300,000 page views a day, according to Sitemeter.

Gawker-owned Valleywag also got slashed in the same set of consolidations. It, however, is hanging onto its name and becoming a single column within Gawker.com.

Gawker Media

Gawker Media ad revenue up 39%, so Denton fires more people

Duncan Riley — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:39:01 +0000

Among the doom and gloom of the economic crisis and recession there’s been no stronger advocate of a worst case scenario outcome for new media than Nick Denton. Over several essays, Denton has argued that online advertising will drop 40% in the coming year, and he’s made broad cuts at Gawker Media, including staff and titles to better place the company to deal with it. So you’d think if things were so bad that Denton’s revenue would be decreasing in line with his prediction… but you’d be wrong.

Gawker Media revenue increased 39% in November.

But just for good measure, Denton took the opportunity to undertake a new round of layoffs. According to Media Bistro:

Gawker editor Sheila McClear and Jezebel editorial assistant Maria-Mercedes Lara have been let go, Gawker weekend editor Alex Carnevale’s month-to-month contract was not re-upped*, and three other editors at Jezebel are being made into part-time employees. At Gizmodo, Gawker Media’s top traffic-getter, reporter Benny Goldman was laid off.

Former Valleywag scribe Nicholas Carlson has more details of the revenue breakdown on Silicon Alley Insider.

Memo to online companies: Please Stop Georedirecting

Duncan Riley — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:31:01 +0000

I’ve written many times here at The Inquisitr and on other sites before about my complete hatred of georetarding, the blocking of content, particularly (but not exclusively) video content based on a users location in the world. In a online world which allegedly has no borders, sites that use georetardation play by old school rules, and ruin the web experience for those outside the United States. For example, there’s nothing more annoying than reading a blog post on a site to find it concludes in a Hulu embed that can’t be played, despite the fact the content providers themselves usually offer it globally from their own sites.

But there’s a new trend starting to emerge that might not be as restrictive as georetardation, but it’s annoying none the less: georedirecting.

Georedirecting is the act of forcibly redirecting a site visitor to a local version of a web page. It’s not a new idea, but it’s rapidly spreading in 2008.

The worst offender is Google. I wrote on my personal blog at the beginning of November about my disgust with YouTube redirects. Mostly it’s not a big issue; if I try to visit a YouTube page here in Australia, they insert “au” where the www usually goes, and 99 times out of 100 I see the same video. Where it becomes an issue is when I try to view non-video content, like the YouTube blog. Every time I try to visit the official YouTube blog, I get redirected to the Australian one, which is entirely different to the US one, so I don’t get to see the blog post. Better still: there’s ZERO way I can switch back to the American one. It’s sort of georetardation by stealth, with a bizarre outcome.

Google also georedirects visits to Google.com, and presumably for anyone outside of the United States, not just Australia. All very well and good, except that the “web” option (you get a choice of Web or Australia) on Google Australia doesn’t deliver the same results as general web search on Google.com itself, it favors local sites where as Google (US) doesn’t. Unlike YouTube, you do at least get the option of switching to Google.com from Google.com.au (after you’ve been redirected there), but why the hell can’t I just type in Google.com and just hit Google.com when I want Google.com, not Google.com.au

Yahoo is a newer entrant to the georedirecting field. I don’t hit Yahoo that often, so this may have been in place for some time, but when I type in Yahoo.com I’m now redirected to Yahoo Australia. Now I do occasionally visit Yahoo Australia, mostly because they have good TV listings for the few times per week I might watch broadcast television, but at other times I want Yahoo.com because they have better news that I’ll occasionally view. My relationship with Yahoo.com also goes back a long time; it was perhaps one of the first sites I ever visited in 1995, and I can still remember getting on Yahoo.com in 96 and marvelling at their amazing directory of interesting webpages. Apparently that’s no longer possible, at least directly. Like Google, you are given an option to visit the US version on the page, but you’re no longer allowed to visit it directly.

There are other examples I won’t bore you with, but the practice is growing. One last one is Gawker Media’s deal with Allure Media in Australia for the Australian versions of some of the Gawker Media titles. For example, Lifehacker.com is redirected to Lifehacker.com.au, and while I have time for both sites, if I type Lifehacker.com into a browser, I want to visit Lifehacker.com. If I put the .au on the end, it’s because I want the local version.

Here’s my bleg to tech companies. I understand and respect your desire to promote local portals, but treating your customers as if they were retarded and forcing them to see what they don’t want to see will eventually come back to bite you when a new generation of competitors emerge who understand the need to treat their customers (ie: us) with respect. Please stop georedirecting. By all means add a geotargeted link to the global product and promote it via ads if you like, but appreciate our business without forcing us to view what we don’t want to view.

Valleywag to close, become Gawker column instead

Duncan Riley — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:15:57 +0000

No sooner had we hit publish on the possible Gawker cuts ahead post then we find the latest news. Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag is to cease as a stand alone site and will instead become a column on Gawker.

In traditional Gawker Media style, the genesis of the idea started with Valleywag editor Owen Thomas joking that he’d end up writing writing Valleywag as a column for Gawker yesterday. As Thomas notes in a post to Valleywag, Denton liked the idea so much, it’s now going to happen.

According to Silicon Alley Insider, the Valleywag brand will live on, but the column will reside on the Gawker.com URL. Thomas has also been demoted from Editor status to columnist. Not word yet on Valleywag’s two remaining writers, paid writer Paul Boutin and intern Alaska Miller, but we’re presuming both are likely to be dumped.

Vale Valleywag…sort of.

Cuts coming to Gawker Media, Denton claims wide model is over

Duncan Riley — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:48:10 +0000

UPDATE: since publishing this post, Valleywag has been cut. Details here.

UPDATE 2: Consumerist is officially on the market

Gawker Media head Nick Denton delivered another doom and gloom essay today, arguing that advertising online is headed for a big fall.

You can read the whole thing here, and others are talked about the advertising numbers, so we won’t go over them as well.

Two takeaways though are interesting. Denton notes that 91% of advertising revenues at Gawker Media come from the top six titles from a total of 12. At the same time, rumors have surfaced that Denton is trying to find a buyer for The Consumerist. Whether Denton may be looking to close or sell the other 5 lower performing sites isn’t known, but we can work out which sites are facing issues based on what Denton wrote in October.

Denton previously named the best performing titles as Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, and Gawker, and suggested at the time that Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Jalopnik were close to obtaining that level. He has previously made cuts at The Consumerist, Fleshbot and Valleywag. Defamer wasn’t mentioned then so add that to the bottom four list. Of the remainder, Deadspin has low traffic, and Jalopnik is car industry focused…and we all know what’s going on in that industry at the moment, so its a good chance of being in the bottom six.

Denton also made mention of the wide model in his post, which is similar to what I was talking about in the blog networks are dying post. Denton doesn’t argue for the one big site model, but he does say that the wide model is over in favor of key brands:

Consolidate titles. Time-pressed media buyers are drawn to scale. Most websites are still way too small to register with the audience-tracking services that agencies rely upon. Of 18 titles launched at Gawker Media, we’ve already spun off or shuttered six. Even now, 91% of advertising revenues come from the top six remaining titles. Every media group has a similarly lopsided distribution. It’s time to choose which properties make it aboard the lifeboat. The era of the sprawling network—established franchises mixed in with experimental sites—is over.

Emphasis is mine, but its the key line.

(img credit: The Guardian)

Is the Blog Network model dying?

Duncan Riley — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:13:01 +0000

Blogging may have started from personal journals, but the diaries of 2000 evolved into something different. As sites grew a new form of company emerged, the blog network, that aimed to take the experience often gathered in a few blogs across many.

Gawker Media was the first notable blog network, but Weblogs Inc was the first to truly go wide quickly in pursuit if growth. That Weblogs Inc model became the inspiration to many, from b5media, a company I was a co-founder of, through to hundreds of smaller and some larger players. Networks thrived during the good times as advertising rates climbed as companies flooded the space in pursuit of targeting blog readers, and blogging itself continued to grow.

In 2008 however, the picture is rapidly changing. The glory days of blog growth has passed, and while many blogs still grow (including this one), many don’t as market saturation makes the market harder than it has ever been. Throw in the economic crisis, and a slowing in online advertising growth, and things are starting to look grim.

The blog network model is under threat.

We reported November 3 that ReadWriteWeb has closed its blog network. Others including Glam Media are facing difficulties (although Glam is a hybrid network + ad network), and the father of blog networks Nick Denton is predicting a 40% drop in ad rates for 2009, after making widespread cuts around his network.

Weblogs Inc sites are thriving, although the company has had a complete makeover since being acquired by AOL 3 years ago. Many of the tech/ special interest blogs have been dumped in favor of a primarily lifestyle play, supported by the AOL portal itself, and the company is shifting to full time employees over the previous standard blog network contractor model. So while they offer good news, they are not a typical case.

One brand advantage

ReadWriteWeb while dumping its blog network is instead launching new blogs under the ReadWriteWeb banner (and on the ReadWriteWeb URL). The inspiration actually lies in traditional media to some extent, but I call this the Huffington Post model. The Huffington Post was an inspiration to the founding of this site, because they proved that you can mix different streams of content on a blog successfully on the one large site under the one brand.

The problem with going wide in a network is the need to have to build individual brands vs a single brand. By increasing content under the one url and one brand, you strengthen that brand instead of splitting your time between promoting multiple brands, even when those brands reside in the one network.

There’s also one other advantage the single brand/ blog method has: it’s easier to sell ads on one site than many sites. Often advertisers aren’t interested in network buys, and may prefer a one site buy over many (particularly where the verticals in the network are different), least this is my experience in the past. It’s easier selling 750,000 page views on one site than 2 million on 10 sites.

Vertical bundling?

My former company b5media was one of the best cases of a wide blog network model. At funding, the company had 250 blogs, and peaked at 350 blogs before cutting back (I don’t have the full number, but it’s around 300 today). Notably b5media has started to launch portal destination sites for its content, such as Starked.com for celebrity news, and Bizzia.com for business news, not replacing individual blogs, but bundling content by vertical, and establishing individual brands for each space. I asked CEO Jeremy Wright the question, and his response came down to verticals

Our belief is still in the “wide” sense (vs say a single vertical) but that you need REACH within EACH of the verticals you cover for it to work. You can’t just do 300-400 blogs or whatever and hope some kind of magic happens. Plus, you need BRANDS.

Slow bleed

The blog network model is dying, although it may never die entirely, and companies such as Weblogs Inc, Gawker, Shiny Media, b5media and others will likely have long futures ahead of them. For those starting new today, the days of building many sites, splitting the focus away from a key brand has passed, and the likelihood of new successful blog networks emerging in the short term is slim at best.

We are likely to see consolidation in the space over the coming years, as titles fold, merge, or join new entities, but even consolidation can lead back to the main brand, for example the Crikey blog network saw existing stand alone blogs come under the one URL, so although the brands continue to exist in some ways, they do so in a way that contributes to the overall brand.

The days of launching dozens of new sites under different URLs has definitely passed. The big blogs of tomorrow will likely be mega-sites that often focus on content outside a key vertical, under the one brand.

(img credit)