The Inquisitr » nick denton

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.

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!’”

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.

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.

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)