The Hill hires Neetzan Zimmerman to run “Audience and Strategy”
Watch out D.C.
That didn’t take long. Neetzan Zimmerman, the ousted editor-in-chief of anonymous app Whisper and former Gawker viral king, has landed a new…
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Gawker Media merging Gizmodo and io9 teams into a tech super-hub
The Future Initiative
As the tech-media market becomes more competitive thanks to aggressive expansion by both Vox Media and BuzzFeed, Gawker Media is merging its tech blogs into a single unit as part of a growth strategy called the Future Initiative
A lesson in how to apologize, and the value of news as a process
Just say it: I screwed up
Annalee Newitz, the editor of Gawker’s science blog io9, stepped forward on Monday to confess to a screwup with a story — and in the process showed why admitting your mistakes can actually be the best strategy of all
Its Kinja commenting platform is the future of Gawker, but also a thorn in the side of its writers
Gawker founder Nick Denton has said that the Kinja commenting platform is a key part of the future of his media empire, but a group of his writers took to the Jezebel blog to complain that it makes it easier for commenters to post abusive messages
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This week in media: VICE talks, Gawker balks, the NYT kills blogs and GE starts its own news hub
In this week’s roundup of media-industry shenanigans, VICE Media wants to be bought, Gawker doesn’t, General Electric starts an online magazine while Medium expands an existing one, and the New York Times is killing its blogs but says it still really likes blogging
If you want more news from First Look Media’s The Intercept, you’re going to have to wait
John Cook, editor of First Look Media’s investigative news vehicle The Intercept, says the site is still trying to hire writers and editors and put an editorial structure together, and so there likely won’t be any new material that isn’t NSA related for some time
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The shifting balance of power in media is real, no matter what the Columbia Journalism Review says
The Columbia Journalism Review says that bloggers like Kara Swisher and Andrew Sullivan are unique, and that other journalists and writers shouldn’t look to them as examples of what is possible — but that’s not true at all
If Popular Science cares about science, why not try to fix comments instead of killing them?
Popular Science magazine says it is shutting down comments because they are “bad for science,” but what’s really bad for science is closing off a potential avenue for informed debate around the topics the site is writing about.
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We did our best, but we were powerless to reinvent journalism — it was a digital riptide!
The Digital Riptide project interviewed more than 60 senior media and technology players about the disruption of journalism and the media industry over the past three decades — but is their conclusion a fair one?
Quartz joins the wave of media entities trying to rethink how reader comments work
Quartz, the business site that is part of Atlantic Media, is giving readers the ability to add “annotations” to specific parts of a story in an attempt to reinvent the way that comments work online.
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Nick Denton makes peace with the banner ad
http://www.digiday.com/publishers/nick-denton-makes-peace-with-the-banner-ad/ Gawker Media founder Nick Denton used to say that the days of banner ads were numbered, but now he says he…
Gawker’s plan to buy crack video goes up in smoke
Gawker will give $200,000 to charity after no one came forward to produce a video showing the mayor of Toronto smoking crack.
Why racist, nasty comments are better than none at all
Many publishers treat obnoxious comments as a problem to be solved — Above the Law takes the opposite approach, and embraces readers as they are.
Want a job at Gawker Media? You can get a head start by being a regular commenter
The new weekend editor at Gawker’s auto-focused Jalopnik blog got hired because he was a knowledgeable commenter on the site, an example of how the feedback loop between writers and readers can pay off for blogs.
What the Atlantic learned from Scientology: native advertising is harder for news brands
The venerable Atlantic is being made the poster child for what happens when native advertising goes wrong. An ad industry event in New York raised the question of whether the Atlantic deserves this blame when many other sites engage in similar practices.
Are comments a wretched hive of scum and villainy or an underused resource for publishers?
Although many traditional media outlets and journalists see reader comments as having little or no value, publishers like Gawker and The Verge see them as a potential source of revenue — and even potential hires.
Fixing online comments — how do you automate trust?
Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, has launched a new platform that he hopes will improve the nature of online comments by adding trust metrics — but there are no shortcuts to healthy online communtiies.
Has Nick Denton really reinvented comments?
When Gawker Media launched its new commenting system earlier this year, founder Nick Denton said that he wanted to reinvent the way readers and writers interact around a story and turn the discussion into the most important feature of a post. Has he succeeded?
Tech bubbles, ad revenue and Twitter — five questions with Nick Denton
Gawker Media founder Nick Denton talks about whether we are in another technology bubble, what the decline of Facebook and Twitter as conversational media say about social networks, the death of advertising and whether he has any interest in selling his digital empire.
Nick Denton wants to turn the online media world on its head
Gawker Media founder Nick Denton says that he wants to fix the way that online comments work, but in order to do that he is having to reinvent Gawker itself — by trying to flip on its head the way that online content works.
Another Tech Blogger Launches An E-Book Venture
Does three make a trend? In recent months, both former Gawker editor Emily Gould and GigaOm’s Michael Wolf launched their own e-book venture…
Gawker, Others Sued For Writing About New Yorker Art Con Story
A strange libel lawsuit that reads like a pulp version of the The Da Vinci Code just became a bit stranger — the controversial art world fi…
Why the Guardian needs its American dream to come true
The Guardian’s latest attempt to become a serious player in the American market is gearing up, with the launch of a new homepage for US readers. But after many failed attempts, can it ever succeed – or could its American dream turn into a nightmare?
Shhh! Don’t Tell Google News You’re a Blog!
Google added some features to Google News, including the ability to choose to see less news from blogs. But how does the search giant define the term “blog?” There’s no easy answer to that, which reinforces why the distinction doesn’t really make any sense any more.
pC2011 Video: Felix Salmon Interviews Nick Denton, Founder, Gawker Media
Gawker Media Founder Nick Denton captured the essence of his Q&A at our recent paidContent 2011 conference when he facetiously cited a six-y…
@ pC2011: Denton: The Internet Is A Mass Medium, Not A Niche One
In a very amiable dialogue about the nature of “internet success,” Gawker founder Nick Denton told Reuters’ finance blogger Felix Salmon tha…
Vid-Biz: Anti-Comcast Coalition, Jackass 3.5, Gawker
Today on the Internet: Web companies including Google and Yahoo team up to protest the Comcast-NBCU merger, Paramount announces a digital-only follow-up to the latest successful Jackass installment, and the BBC is determined to count every view, including online and VOD.
Gawker Does Its First Ever Acquisition: Buys Cityfile
Gawker Media has done its first ever acquisition, after being in existence for about eight years: it has acquired New York blog and people d…
Industry Moves: Valleywag Editor Owen Thomas Defects To NBC
Perhaps folding Valleywag into a Gawker.com column wasn’t such a good idea. Editor Owen Thomas is leaving the tech gossip blog to join *NBC*…
Downsized Gawker Editors Launch Hollywood Site Movieline.com
In the midst of Gawker Media’s consolidation and layoffs, a trio of editors from its Hollywood-centric site Defamer got pushed out. The edit…
Gawker Media Breezes Through February; Other Smaller Sites Faring Well, Too
When Gawker Media founder Nick Denton talks about plummeting display-ad revenues — as he has often recently — lots of people listen for cl…
Denton Gives Up On Defamer Sale; Folds Brand Into Gawker
Nick Denton continues to consolidate Gawker Media brands under the Gawker.com roof, this time folding in formerly for-sale Defamer.com. In a…
Consumers Union To Buy Gawker’s Consumerist.com
Consumers Union is buying Consumerist.com from Gawker Media, according to the New York Times — meshing the non-profit publisher’s interest…
Gawker Media Lays Off 19 Ahead Of Coming Storm — But Keeps Hiring
Gawker Media’s Nick Denton is taking a defensive crouch ahead of the gathering economic storm. In a memo to staff (first posted by SAI), Den…
Denton Slims Down Gawker Media: Gridskipper, Idolator, Wonkette Leave The Fold
Blog network Gawker Media is playing gin again, laying down three sites, while picking up none. In an internal email, via SAI, Gawker chief…
Karina’s Capsule: DR Adams Films
Over the past couple of months, Ryan Adams –– yes, THAT Ryan Adams –– has taken the Internet by storm. Adams’ early…
Karina’s Capsule: Arin Crumley and Balance
Last weekend, filmmaker and digital DIY evangelist Arin Crumley went to a party in Brooklyn, where his coat, wallet, passport, bike and…
Karina’s Capsule: Spoofing The Hills
FunnyOrDie’s spoof of The Hills, starring James Franco and Mila Kunis as Justin Bobby and Audrina, respectively, is OK, but so much…
