Nick Denton has finally acknowledged the backlash from Gawker’s controversial site redesign, in a lengthy post that rubbed a few commenters the wrong way and didn’t seem to deliver much word of actual improved functionality.

Denton’s tone suggests perhaps the issues weren’t so much with the site’s frankly awkward design (although there were dozens of “bug fixes,” he admits) but rather that people just aren’t seeing the vision. He begins by explaining that the site’s lack of official word on the backlash was because they were getting a bigger picture of user opinion on the site’s function:

I should first explain the radio silence of the last couple of weeks. We’d wanted to respond to feedback not with promises of future improvements but with actual fixes. So that’s what I’m doing now—but I regret any impression that we weren’t listening.

The post outlines several revisions of the new Gawker, but comments like this from Denton didn’t go over well with remaining readers, many of whom (myself included) use the Canadian Gawker site to bypass the redesign:

News web sites may indeed become more application-like and readers may grow accustomed to swiping instead of scrolling. But they’re not there yet, as the extensive criticism of the sidebar made clear.

Amusingly, the comment thread brought out some of the old-Gawker snark that has been missing in the comments since the new Gawker stumbled into being. One commenter said:

This thread is like finding a surprise packed disco in the bowels of the Marie Celeste.

In an email to staff, Denton described the new layout rollout as “more bruising” to both Gawker media staff and readers than was necessary, and describes the impact on traffic:

Obviously, the reduction in traffic from Google — as from most design changes — has been significant. It doesn’t affect readers of the site — but it does have a disproportionate effect on uniques. Search optimization of the new layout is a top priority.

What I personally find most interesting about all the redesign hand-wringing is the reader response, which seems to be very old-school message board style. The bastard child of the new layout and ensuing outcry is a snark-site called crasstalk.com, and many of the site’s top commenters have apparently fled for good in favor of it, much like what often occurs when a big message board melts down:

I haven’t been back there since about a week after the glitchy new format hit. I – and about 200 of Gawker’s best and most loyal commenters – are now over at www.crasstalk.com , where we get to not only comment but contribute to the site by writing posts on a variety of interesting subjects.

So, who’s right? Are readers just too pedestrian and behind the times to “get” the new Gawker, or was the site a tone-deaf interpretation of what Nick Denton imagines the future of blogs to be? Do you think the readers and commenters that fled are gone forever?

Denton addresses controversial Gawker makeover, details ‘bug fixes’ is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’m a New Yorker, and obviously, a blogger by trade. Gawker is like my New York Times.

I saw a bit of buzzing last week about Gawker and blogs dying or somesuch, but I must have tuned out, because it was a bit of a shock for me to fire up my morning tabs and discover someone had completely revised Gawker and now it is really, really weird. It’s not just Gawker- Jezebel, io9, Deadspin, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Lifehacker and Engadget have all undergone the same re-jigger to display a jarring one story per page.

It’s early to pass judgement on the makeover, as first off, it’s buggy. Kotaku and io9 both failed to load for me, displaying sidelinks, but no main content. Opening different posts in tabs failed for me as well, changing the main tab you’re clicking links off of to the link just clicked- a major pet peeve for people who read sites by opening every relevant link in a tab and then working backwards to the first tab.

At the risk of sounding like the people who get spasticated when Facebook changes their layout at all, I’m not very sure this redesign is going to catch on very well. For one thing, it makes catching up to a large backlog of posts difficult, and pages seem far slower to load. Ads at least seem to take up more space- an understandable change, if that observation is correct, but I found the placement to interrupt my reading of the content. Even now, as I flip back to the Gawker tab I have open, the sidebar still hasn’t loaded and is spinning despite the several minutes the tab has “working.” (See image above.)

Nick Denton seems to disagree with me, saying of the new design:

“It just feels inevitable,” Denton says. “We have a crying need to showcase both exclusives and visual posts. The visual posts are now at least half of our top-performing stories. And audience growth on sites like Deadspin and Gawker has been driven by our most sensational scoops.”

Ex-Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder didn’t concur, however- even willing to wager against Denton that the redesign was ill-conceived:

“I’m on the record that I think the redesigns will fail. And I’m now officially opening the betting pool. I think Denton is going to be forced to pull back on this. If anyone wants to wager that the redesign don’t get yanked back (or greatly modified) by, let’s say, June 1… I’ll take your bet.”

Do you think the redesign will win over Gawker blogs readers? Do blog readers want more of a magazine format? Skimming Gawker, it kind of reminds me of what I ‘don’t’ miss about magazines- difficulty finding and sorting content, having to skim away from large images in which I have no interest (rather than clicking to enlarge interesting pics), and a more time-consuming overall user experience. What are your thoughts?

Are you digging on the Gawker Media extreme makeover? is a post from: The Inquisitr

It seems Gawker writers may have poked the hornet’s nest a few too many times this year, as a group of shadowy internet pranksters have cracked the fuck out of all of Gawker Media’s web properties to retaliate for the snarky blog’s “arrogance.”

Do you use a “life password” and comment on the Gawker site? It seems many Gawker slash Twitter users may have, resulting in a flood of spam posts about Acai berries so prolific, it was originally thought to be a worm that was “spreading like wildfire.” The group taking responsibility for the hack hasn’t officially said any of Gawker’s 4chan baiting posts were the catalyst, but Gawker hasn’t been shy with the number of insults levied at the notorious imageboard.

So what do you need to know about the massive Gawker hack?

Signs of a breach were there, but no one noticed it for what it was and Gawker peeps wrote it off right away. Says TNW:

Back in November, (Nick) Denton was told by a co-worker that he was spotted logged in to the Campfire backend, this was not him. Instead of safeguarding his credentials, Denton is convinced by other staff members that it was his own fault and doesn’t change his passwords, something he may later regret.

Gawker says Twitter accounts weren’t compromised, but the influx of cross-user spam suggests otherwise. Whether you used the same password or something else was afoot, check your Twitter account for unauthorized tweets, and consider changing your password just in case.

This is probably like the herpes of database breaches. Information that’s been made available reveals a still-shockingly weak number of passwords used for the site, thousands of which were the word “password.” While your Gawker commenting account getting hacked isn’t the be all and end all of internet embarrassments, many of the users affected by the breach probably use the same password/email combo across the web.

This particular hack will probably keep on giving long after it’s no longer newsworthy. Furthermore, many of the hacked and posted accounts were linked to federal work email addresses, NASA, large banks and other massive entities where we can only hope those using them practice a modicum of password diversification.

Well, I’m sick of this bullshit, how can I delete my Gawker commenter account? Not currently an option, so if you’re among those who have been affected by the breach, tough titties, sayeth Gawker.

Also, Gawker writers thought the idea of 4chan or a similar entity coming after them was pretty funny. Gnosis, the group who say they carried out the attack, released a chat log among Gawker writers where they expressed a desire for 4chan to “bring it on.” It would appear, in fact, it has already been brought:

rian M

The headeline of your post should be “Suck on This, 4Chan”

Maureen O.
I like the call to make today Everybody Write About 4chan Day

Hamilton N.
Nick Denton Says Bring It On 4Chan, Right to My Home Address (After The Jump)

Ryan T.
We Are Not Scared of 4chan Here at 210 Elizabeth St NY NY 10012

Richard L.
don’t forget Fourth Floor

Ryan T.
Right! And Brian’s headcut illustration

Ryan T.
As the lead image

Brian M.
Oh, 4Chan does not want to mess with me once I wind my neck up at them

Brian M.
#giirrrrrrlllllllll

Maureen O.
hey guess what, 4chan has already declared gawker the winner of the 4chan war! we won!

Richard L.
VICTORY

Richard L.
what’d they say?

Jim N.
USA! USA!

Richard L.
MR. OBAMA, TEAR DOWN THAT MOSQUE!

Maureen O.
they say that this day will go down in history as the day 4chan failed.

Richard L.
that’s terrific.

Also? Hamilton Nolan and Richard Lawson called commenters “peasants” as news of the breach began spreading yesterday. Pic above, but the attitude displayed in the chat (“oh, well. unimportant.”) has not garnered Gawker any sympathy since the incident became public knowledge.

One last thing? Fleshbot was part of the data dump, so that should be interesting.

Gawker Media hack about as bad as it could possibly be is a post from: The Inquisitr

Today in pointless victories comes one for former Noxema girl Rebecca Gayheart and her Gray’s Anatomy spouse, Eric Dane.

The two were featured in a widely viewed sex tape most prominently disseminated on Gawker. The clip, a fairly seedy affair that features the pair engaging in a wild night of sex and smokable substances with Keri Ann Peniche, has been floating around the internet ether since August of last year. Although countless people have screencapped, torrented and saved the footage in that year, Gawker has been tied up in court over it since September of last year.

In a statement, a Gawker spokesperson contends that use of the clip was protected, but the legal wrangling had become too large of a pain in the ass:

“Although we are confident that our use of the video on Gawker was protected fair use, because the posts already had been available to our readers for nearly a year, and because we already had won an important decision from the court striking large parts of the plaintiffs’ damages claims, we agreed to remove the posts as part of a global settlement to avoid the burden of further litigation,” Gawker COO Gaby Darbyshire said in a statement.

In exchange for Gawker pulling the material, Gayheart and Dane will drop their $1m lawsuit against the blog network.

Gawker closes barn door year after horse bolts, removes Rebecca Gayheart/Eric Dane sex tape is a post from: The Inquisitr

The move by b5media yesterday to terminate the contracts of over 50 bloggers writing for its now defunct entertainment network is the first stage in the mass firing of all contract bloggers, The Inquisitr has learned.

The full number of bloggers to be fired remains unclear at the time of writing, but is believed to be somewhere between 100 and 150 contract bloggers.

Confirmation of the move is backed by former Gawker Editor Elizabeth Spiers, who would now appear to have taken a senior role at the company.

On her personal blog, Spiers writes

One of my larger clients is launching a new lifestyle site and relaunching three others and I need new staffers for all of them. (We’re basically tearing them down and starting over—redesigning them, restructuring editorially and adding lots of new original content.)

On her Tumblr blog she confirms that the client is b5media:

More background on Crushable and what else I’ve been working on: one of my clients is b5media a Toronto-based (but quickly moving to New York) web publishing network

Notably Spiers also claims that b5media is doing 30 million page views a month across the network currently, a claim so fanciful I’ve only just stopped laughing after reading it (see the Alexa ranks for the remaining sites in this post.) But I digress.

Spiers does bring experience to the role, having worked at both Gawker and MediaBistro, however this is her first time running (alone) a multi-title content network like this (note she was a founder of Dead Horse Media.) The decision to not include existing content in new pop blog Crushable may indicate that she is may be already be out of her depth when it comes to simple things like SEO and the value of Google.

To rub salt into the wounds of existing bloggers for the network, Spiers is also advertising for contributors; we’d guess that this may indicate a shift of payment model from b5media’s previous mix of rev share and flat rates to a payment per post model.

If you’re writing for b5media currently and haven’t started looking for a new writing gig yet, now would be a good time to start.

b5media To Fire All Remaining Contract Bloggers, Approx 100-150 People is a post from: The Inquisitr

Gawker became the kind of media news it tends to report on today, with the announcement of the acquisition of CityFile and subsequent replacement of Editor in Chief Gabriel Snyder.

Explained in two memos, posted below, the ouster seems to have come as a surprise to Snyder, who has been with Gawker Media for eighteen months. While the reaction he expressed was public and thusly tamed, is new media really doomed to partnerships as short as Snyder seems to think? He took a quick working conditions snipe at the position (eighteen hour days, seven day weeks), but is pounding the pavement (literal or virtual) every two years or so the new career standard? The resignation (emotionally, not the career kind) in Snyder’s recounting was kind of sad. It doesn’t seem Gawker suffered under his direction, and anyone who’s been strategically let go will probably bristle at this bit in Denton’s memo on the decision:

We had hoped to persuade Gabriel Snyder to stay in a management role. But he’s moving on. With help from an awesomely strong team of writers and the new Gawker.tv operation, Gabriel doubled Gawker’s audience during his tenure (http://bit.ly/c6BXk8.) To anyone out there looking to build up an online property: snap him up quickly.

Which we all know likely means “we cut his pay to just enough to cover coffee and a metrocard, rescinded all responsibilities and returning would be humiliating.” Snyder is staying on editing the site until Friday, at which time the position will be taken over by Remy Stern. The acquisition is the first for Gawker Media, although Denton denies Gawker is going on an “acquisition spree.”

So, yeah. Snyder’s goodbye to colleagues (published in a post starting out with “okay, this is weird.” Aw, sad…) and then Denton’s full memo, below:

From: Gabriel Snyder
Date: February 15, 2010 3:47:23 PM EST
Subject: Farewell

For reasons which I’m not too clear on, but I’m sure Nick Denton will explain momentarily, I am being replaced as editor-in-chief of Gawker.

Honesty is Gawker’s only virtue, so it seems inappropriate to engage in the usual corporate euphemisms of “wanting to explore new new opportunities” or “take a larger role in the company” or “spend more time with my family” (though eighteen-hour days and seven-day work weeks do take their toll on personal relationships), so I’ll put this as plainly as we’d report any other masthead ouster: I am being canned.

Building this website into what it is today — a big operation with 11 writers, a regular source of national news and a challenger to the mainstream media organizations that it once mocked — has been the best job of my career. Transitioning from print to online meant adopting an entirley new biorhythm. Transitioning from writer to editor has meant learning to bask in the reflected glory of the talented staff who contribute every day. I love Gawker and adore the crew that makes it happen.

You deserve all the credit; my role has been to push you to be yourselves: Alex Pareene’s incisive political commentary, John Cook’s dogged reporting and clear-headed analysis, Brian Moylan’s ability to enunciate conversation-starting ideas, Richard Lawson’s ability to produce dazzling copy at superhuman speeds, Ryan Tate’s cliche-free coverage of Silicon Valley, Hamilton Nolan’s workhorse ethic and humor, Doree Shafrir’s gimlet-eyed appraisals of the culture and society around her. Waking up each morning to the work of Adrian Chen, Maureen O’Connor and Ravi Somaiya is a pleasure. Watching Foster Kamer dance on the stage each weekend is a joy. You, without a doubt, make up the strongest staff Gawker’s ever had, and make the site the best it’s ever been.

Eighteen months ago, when I first sat down with Nick to discuss taking over the Gawker helm from him, I saw a huge opportunity to build a site from its roots as an intimate discussion among Manhattan’s power elite and build it into a national news brand (an aspiration that seems to come up every time there’s a masthead shakeup around here). Attaining those goals have been the biggest accomplishment of my career. As I saw it, Facebook, Twitter and smaller blogs had slowly encroached on the role Gawker once served. Among the most difficult, though most rewarding to the site, efforts was to take the site from a bankers’ hours schedule to publishing 24 hours around the clock, weekends included. I believed the site could be grown beyond its traditional audience by focusing on news from the nation’s four cultural capitals (New York, D.C., L.A. and San Francisco) — which became even more clear when I was given the task of integrating former standalone sites Defamer and Valleywag into the flagship. Oh, and then there have been the stories. It’s become common to see national newspapers and broadcasts cite Gawker on vast array of stories: the U.S. Kabul embassy security dudes behaving badly, the Hipster Grifter saga, leading the entire media for a weekend on the Balloon Boy fiasco, those pictures of Katie Couric dancing, pillorying Harold Ford through simple questions, Annie Leibovitz’s financial meltdown, the Late Night Wars, Facebook privacy, Anna Wintour … more than I can count. I was determined to compete with the biggest news sites on the internet. And today, I am glad to say it does.

But the history of Gawker Media careers shows that they tend to burn bright and fast. So it shouldn’t have come as a much of a surprise when our mercurial owner told me he’s hatched other plans for Gawker. He offered me a new, temporary position as an assistant managing editor of Gawker Media as a holding job, which I have declined. I can’t see how I’d be in a position to succeed at the role going into it with one foot literally out the door. I’ll be editing the site until Friday. After that, please stay in touch (gs@gabrielsnyder.com). And needless to say, as of now I am on the market and will be beating the media bushes for my next opportunity.

I will miss you all.

Best,
Gabriel

Denton’s memo:

From: Nick Denton
Date: February 15, 2010 3:48:03 PM EST
Subject: Gawker Media acquiring Cityfile

For the first few years of Gawker Media, the business press had one abiding preoccupation: when are you going to sell out? Today we’re giving the M&A gossips something else to talk about. The company is making its first acquisition: Cityfile, the New York news site founded by Remy Stern. The price is not being disclosed.

Cityfile will be the New York and media industry channel on Gawker, alongside Valleywag and Defamer, our tech and entertainment sub-sites. Cityfile’s 2,000-plus profiles of New York notables will be the centerpiece of our new topic and people pages. And Remy Stern, a former writer on several Gawker sites and editor at the now-legendary Radar magazine, will take over as editor-in-chief of Gawker. He starts on February 22nd.

We had hoped to persuade Gabriel Snyder to stay in a management role. But he’s moving on. With help from an awesomely strong team of writers and the new Gawker.tv operation, Gabriel doubled Gawker’s audience during his tenure (http://bit.ly/c6BXk8.) To anyone out there looking to build up an online property: snap him up quickly.

Does this mean Gawker is going on an acquisition spree?

Well, it’s a question of scale. Each of the Gawker titles does already have more than 1m US visitors a month — making them usually the largest or second largest blog title in their category. Nevertheless the threshold of advertising success does continue to rise and we’re increasingly competing online with TV and newspaper groups.
Moreover, we’ve long actively managed our portfolio of properties, selling Consumerist to Consumers Union last year, for instance — or closing down unsuccessful properties. To achieve critical mass in entertainment and tech, we have indeed looked at a few opportunities in the last few months. If online media is consolidating, we’d rather be a consolidator than consolidatee. And revenue growth of 22% in 2009 provides the resources. (Deal ideas? Contact Gaby Darbyshire.)

Don’t get too excited, however. The successful launches of Jezebel and io9 confirmed our belief that it’s usually more effective to build than buy. Lifted by the iPad launch and the late-night TV wars, our nine sites — all launched inhouse — drew a US audience of more than 14m in January. Our best editorial investment continues to be the recruitment of great writers and producers on our own sites — and the pursuit of hot stories.

Nick

Gawker makes first acquisition, ousts EIC is a post from: The Inquisitr

Anyone who follows Apple product launches will know that the company is extremely guarded about their products and apparently Gawker Media crossed the line this week when they offered $100,000 to the first person who could provide any pictures or videos of the Apple Tablet.

Apple served the company with a cease and desist order which in its basic terms said that asking to knowingly receive trade secrets and then divulging them is against a bunch of California laws, especially when money is paid for those secrets.

The response from Gawker?

Oh well, you have to do what you have to do: The offer still stands.

Just don’t do anything illegal to get any of the evidence, and use an anonymous mail when sending your pics or video to Gabriel at Gawker. [Gawker]

Gotta love Nick Denton and his “screw it attitude” for his company, this one could get messy if the device actually ends up in Gawkers hands.

Apple Threatens To Sue Gawker Media Over Apple Tablet Rumor Contest is a post from: The Inquisitr

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.

Gawker Media Launches Video Site Gawker.TV is a post from: The Inquisitr

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!’”

Eric Dane sues Gawker over McSteamy sex tape is a post from: The Inquisitr

Gawker has an interesting post this morning proving that newspapers may have not quite lost their relevance yet.

One of the site’s bloggers pointed out a picture in today’s paper that appears to show the ex-Mrs. Pitt’s cash and prizes. In the snap, Aniston is on set, being shoved into a trunk by rumored beau Gerard Butler. The shot shows Jennifer, legs in the air, and apparently not wearing any panties.

Gawker describes the possible oopsie:

What is no laughing matter is, if you look really close, it looks like, well, Jen is smiling at the camera…and her face isn’t visible. Like a color commentator for the celebrity set, we have circled and blown up the offending area. While we’re no experts in these matters (we were initially distracted from her womanhood by Butler’s ass in the bent over position) it looks like we’re getting the whole kit and caboodle. This has got to be the first time we’ve gotten into an actress’ personal space getting into a car rather than out of one.

So can you really see Jennifer Aniston’s vagina? It’s definitely… ambiguous. Click through for a larger, unobscured version of the picture. It kind of reminds you that while a cease and desist letter can get a pic pulled within minutes, try getting an embarassing snap unseen by the whole of New York City.

Whoops- did the newspaper print Jennifer Aniston’s hoo-ha? is a post from: The Inquisitr

For much of last night and earlier today, most of Gawker Media’s properties were experiencing intermittent downtime, which is highly unusual for them.

All properties seem to be back up and running at their peak as I write this, so all is well again, but what caused the downtime in the first place? A property that Gawker sold last year was hacked.

The high profile consumer watchdog blog, Consumerist, purchased by the Consumers Union in 2008, was hacked and since it is apparently still hosted on the same servers as current Gawker sites, the hackage damage cascaded across other Gawker properties as well.

From Gawker:

Well here’s your last (Hopefully!) technical difficulties update: According to a memo sent out tonight by our IT team, the recent Gawker Media server problems were the result of a DDOS attack against Consumerist.

Quick thought – It may be time for Gawker to cut the umbilical cord with Consumerist, on the tech end of things at least.

Gawker dusts itself off after DDoS attack is a post from: The Inquisitr

“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.

Gizmodo, Gawker, i0, Jezebel, Consumerist up and down all day is a post from: The Inquisitr

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.

Report: Gawker’s “Consumerist” Closing In On Sale is a post from: The Inquisitr

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.

Gawker Media ad revenue up 39%, so Denton fires more people is a post from: The Inquisitr

The company — responsible for such blog giants as Valleywag, Lifehacker, and Gizmodo — has dropped its Gawker.com per-pageview rate down to $5 per 1,000 views, Radar says. The rate was $7.50 at the start of the year, then fell to $6.50 in the second quarter, leading up to this week’s adjustment.

Radar indicates owner Nick Denton sent the staff a memo saying they’d “broken the site budget” — a phrase now referenced on Gawker’s front page (see below). The e-mail, the story says, goes on to note each writer will need to bring in “higher targets” and explains some calculations had suggested the rate should have gone as low as $4.15, so it’s “not as bad as it could have been.”

Gawker dropped three sites from its arsenal back in April: Wonkette, Gridskipper, and Idolator.

Gawker Issues Independence Day Paycuts is a post from: The Inquisitr