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…
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Nick Denton says the traffic game is over, and BuzzFeed has won
In a memo to staff, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton says the site will no longer judge the value of posts purely on how much traffic they generate, and that when it comes to the readership wars, BuzzFeed has won…
Read MoreWhen is a media company also a tech company? It’s complicated
When is a media company also a technology company? When the use of technology -- not just for publishing, but for understanding how content flows and is discovered online -- is at the core of what that company does…
Read MoreThere’s never been a better time to run a niche media business
Turning a media site into a massive, multibillion-dollar property reaching hundreds of millions of readers isn't the only route to success any more -- starting and running a niche or targeted site has never been easier…
Read MoreNick Denton unveils “the great unclenching” at Gawker Media
Gawker founder Nick Denton unveiled a management shakeup he referred to as "the great unclenching," in which he will share power over the blog network with a management committee of seven, a change he hopes will help Gawker compete with BuzzFeed and Vox…
Read MoreA lesson in how to apologize, and the value of news as a process
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…
Read MoreYes, newsrooms are shrinking — but journalism is growing
Layoffs at newspapers like the New York Times are no longer a surprise. But we should be careful not to assume that just because some papers are downsizing, journalism as a whole is in decline -- because it's growing faster than ever…
Read MoreA look inside the rapidly-expanding world of New York’s new-media stars
New-media companies like BuzzFeed, Gawker, VICE Media and Tumblr are all expanding rapidly both in New York itself and around the world -- almost all are moving into new buldings or taking over more of the ones they are in…
Read MoreOne secret to the success of Quartz, BuzzFeed and Gawker: They look at news as a service
Most traditional media outlets are used to thinking of journalism or news as something they create and then distribute to a waiting audience -- but seeing it as a product or service instead can change the way you think about your job in some fundamental ways…
Read MoreWhy it’s smart of the HuffPo to partner with Beacon Reader in crowdfunding a reporter
The Huffington Post has sparked a backlash by partnering with Beacon Reader to crowdfund a reporting fellowship in Ferguson, Mo. -- but the project is actually a smart way to experiment with a new journalism-financing tool and create relationships with readers in the process…
Read MoreIts 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…
Read MoreIceberg rescues Titanic: Content marketer launches fund for investigative journalism
Contently, a New York-based startup that specializes in content marketing, has launched a non-profit foundation that will use some of the revenue from its marketing business to fund investigative journalism…
Read MoreThis 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…
Read MoreIf 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…
Read MoreThe internet didn’t invent viral content or clickbait journalism — there’s just more of it now, and it happens faster
Many people seem to believe that the idea of "clickbait" or artificially viral content was invented by the internet or social media, but it has been around for centuries and was arguably perfected by newspapers -- all the web has done is make it faster and more efficient…
Read MoreTraffic is a good thing for media companies to pay attention to — except when it isn’t
More and more publishers are choosing to tie the compensation they give their writers to some kind of traffic-based measurement -- but short-term metrics like pageviews and unique visitors are inherently flawed, and as such aren't always a good measure of actual value…
Read MoreBelieve it or not, Nick Denton and Gawker Media want the same thing that Wikipedia does
The force behind Gawker's revolutionary Kinja commenting platform is a vision of the future in which the truth about events is determined democratically by journalists and non-journalists alike, Gawker founder Nick Denton tells Playboy magazine…
Read MoreAs the line between platform and publisher continues to blur, who wins and who loses?
The term "platishers" is a terrible one, but Jonathan Glick of Sulia has a point about the increasingly blurred lines between platforms and publishers. The real question is what the duties of those platforms are towards the users who create most of the content…
Read MoreA growing obsession with viral content exposes the weakness of most digital media
Everyone from BuzzFeed to the Washington Post seems to be chasing after viral content because of the traffic it brings -- but all this does is reinforce how doomed the pageview-based model really is…
Read MoreThe soul of a new machine: Gawker struggles with the slippery slope between viral and true
When you come across a viral story about a heart-warming incident that you know will get millions of pageviews, how closely should you look into the claims that the viral story is based on?…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreIf 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.…
Read MorePublic shaming and free speech: Why the rush to attack Pax Dickinson makes me nervous
Pax Dickinson, the former CTO for Business Insider, lost his job after some of his tweets were criticized for being sexist and racist. But at what point does public shaming of such behavior have a negative impact on free speech?…
Read MoreWe 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?…
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