Gawker | The New York Observer

Ana Marie Cox Doesn't Miss Working for Nick Denton

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:23:48 -0500

Before Nick Denton tapped Ana Marie Cox to be the founding editor of Wonkette, she was editing restaurant reviews in Florida and writing on a personal blog. But that doesn't mean she misses her time hammering out pithy posts under the Gawker umbrella, as she told the Onion's AV Club.

AVC: Are you nostalgic for your Wonkette days?

AMC: I was paid $12 a post.

AVC: That's a no?

AMC: No. I know my life has been really...

Un-Gawkering Gawker

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:37:36 -0500

“Ah, this is going to be fun,” posted Nick Denton when Cityfile went live in 2008.

Among the information contained in the site’s 2,000-plus profiles: the Gawker czar’s own middle name—“Guido.”

He was duly impressed. And he seems not to have forgotten.

Cityfile went from fun Web diversion to serious business proposition this week, when Denton announced he had bought the site, making it Gawker Media’s first acquisition. Gawker editor in...

Gawker Fires and Acquires

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:37:51 -0500

Nick Denton has fired Gawker editor in chief Gabriel Snyder and acquired Cityfile, along with Cityfile founder Remy Stern.

The Awl has two in-house memos heralding the changes, which apparently went out one minute apart.

In Denton's announcement of the Cityfile purchase, he writes:

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...

Tucker Carlson Hopes He Doesn't Have to Be Like Nick Denton

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:55:10 -0500

Next week, the ever-boyish, bow-tied, former Crossfire-r Tucker Carlson launches a shot across the bow of conservative media with a new web site aimed at right-leaning readers.

When he first announced the idea early last summer, Mr. Carlson said his new site--called The Daily Caller--would be "along the lines of The Huffington Post." Almost exactly parallel lines, as it turns out. The Washington Independent notes:

According to Carlson, there will be at least one editor monitoring...

Times Buyouts End, Blog Reports Carnage

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:24:00 -0500

Today was the deadline for Times employees to volunteer for buyouts, which means that now the time has come for speculation over who and how many accepted the package, and who might get fired.

To keep track of it all, Gawker made another job-loss wiki in the style of their A.P. layoff coverage. The tone is sympathetic, but it's hard to not to notice it's the new media mourning the old media.

(Not that Gawker has...

At 400 Million Pageviews, Denton Urges Bloggers Onward

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:20:48 -0500

In a memo to staff, Nick Denton touts 400 million pageviews in November for all of Gawker Media sites put together--more than the L.A. Times, less than The New York Times. No site had fewer than 20 million pageviews.

But the work is not done for his "bunch of scrappy bloggers":

One little footnote. Pageviews have been our standard measure of success. They're easy to understand. The Sitemeter numbers update throughout the day. But we do...

The A.P. at Last Stand

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:07:38 -0500

Gawker's Hamilton Nolan owned the week's A.P.-layoffs story, and this morning he took an elegiac tone: "We hope you will all receive much grander tributes to your individual careers than a single line in a Gawker post. Good luck to everyone."

Since it's elegy time, the A.P.'s official online history traces the last 163 years of American history--and the tragic fate of many A.P. writers.

For example:

1876: "Mark Kellogg, a stringer, becomes the first AP reporter...

'Who Tweets?'

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:41:09 -0400

This week, the Magazine Publishers of America held its first Magazine Innovation Summit. The Observer's Chloe Malle attended the "Decline and Rise of Magazine Journalism" panel, which was moderated by Slate's Jacob Weisberg and included The New Yorker's Susan Morrison and Gawker's Nick Denton.

Denton obligingly played the destroyer of received wisdom. Weisberg asked about how Gawker fact-checks:

“We don’t,” Mr. Denton replied flatly. “We aim to get the truth over time. The verification model is...

Paterson, Late

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:38:52 -0400

ALBANY—Gawker reports that David Paterson made an unscheduled appearance late last night/early this morning at a West Side club, where several parties were going on and Funkmaster Flex was making a special deejaying appearance.

I contacted Paterson's press office a couple of hours ago to ask if that sounded right. A spokesman promised to check it out, but I still haven't heard anything back.

Paterson is splitting his time between New York...

The Future of Something: Nick Denton, Bonnie Fuller, and Others Hold Forth at I Want Media Panel

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:10:01 -0400

All that inky meat "shaken loose" from magazine and newspaper layoffs might seem like tasty bait for blog companies, according to Gawker chief Nick Denton. But he doesn't want 'em. "It's very, very tempting right now to say, 'Ok, let's go out and let's hire 50 of the best people from newspapers and magazines," he told the crowd gathered this afternoon, June 3, at NYU's Arther L. Carter Journalism Institute in Cooper Square. But,...

The Times is Mad as Hell and ... Well?

Tue, 05 May 2009 20:26:50 -0400

The New York Times has a public-relations problem.

Every day there seem to be articles, and endless Web and television chatter, about The Times: The Times might shut down The Globe! The Times lost $75 million in the first quarter!

There’s only $34 million left in cash! The Times will stop printing in May! The Times should stop printing in May!

At the Times Center last week, at a meeting hosted by CEO Janet Robinson, Metro reporter...

Gawker Alumni Launch Web Site for 'Resonant, Weird, Important, Frightening' News

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:37:39 -0400

“People kept telling me that they were bored with the Internet,” said Choire Sicha, an “ancestor of ephemeral Gawker” and soon-to-be published book author (not to mention a former Observer editor and columnist), who was calling into The Observer from his “home office” in the East Village this afternoon.

“It’s sort of like, it’s so compartmentalized and pushed into little categories into what can be covered and...

Inside Baseball: Mark Bowden's Shot Heard 'Round The World (Wide Web)

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:08:00 -0400

On Monday, the editors of Vanity Fair posted Mark Bowden's May 2009 write-around on Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. on the Web. The story, which was Mr. Bowden's first for the magazine, made quite an impression on the small—and ever-shrinking—community of media reporters and pundits who obsess about The New York Times, not to mention the bloggers, tumblrers and twittererers who do whatever it is they do ("aggregate"? "reblog"? "tweet"? help us out with the correct...

Abrams Research To Launch Media Blog: Writers From Gawker, New York, and Others Approached

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:44:15 -0400

Dan Abrams wants in on the media blogging and aggregation business.

For the past several months, Mr. Abrams—the chief legal analyst for NBC News and head of the nascent media strategy firm Abrams Research—has been meeting with various New York-based media reporters, editors, and bloggers about the potential editorial venture.

To date, nobody has signed on for the job.

"I think it’s very possible that I will pursue an on-line Web property that will...

Choire Sicha, An Ancestor of Ephemeral Gawker, Writes a Book

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 07:06:37 -0400

Choire Sicha is finally writing a book. He has never wanted to before, but now he does. It's going to be about being young in recession-era New York, and it will be published through the HarperStudio imprint of HarperCollins when he finishes his reporting about a year from now.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Sicha said the as-yet-untitled book will follow a group of 20-somethings as they try to make their lives...