Nick Denton

Sheila McClear, one of Gawker.com's three writers, has been fired.

Ms. McClear told us her layoff was characterized to her as part of a budget cut at the Web site, and was told that her page-views were lacking. She learned the news after she heard rumors that there would be further cuts at the company (19 people were let go back in October, and a few more last month) and asked her bosses directly if she had anything to be concerned about. After that, she was summoned to a conference room and told that she'd be let go starting in January.

She said she was told there would be no more layoffs at the Gawker Web site in this round of cuts.  read more »

Out magazine threw its annual "Out 100" fete at Gotham Hall in midtown on Friday, Nov. 14, an event that felt more intimate than in previous years: fewer high-wattage luminaries and an altogether understated sensibility.

And, indeed, there was some bad mojo in the air. Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that prohibits gay marriage, had passed 10 days earlier. And you couldn't help but feel that Out--which was sold earlier this year for pennies to the owners of the hereTV! network--might be throwing its last big party that every gay boy from Chelsea to Bushwick tries to get on the list for.  read more »

At Nick Denton's Gawker Media, the only constant is change, apparently. Yesterday, Media Mob brought news that the blog network was losing its managing editor and that Consumerist was for sale.

Today, Valleywag, the silicon valley gossip site Mr. Denton launched two and a half years ago (a look back at the site's early days reveals some adorably dated stories like Will we see a real iPod phone?), will be more or less folded into Gawker, according to a post on the site by Paul Boutin.

Here's what Mr. Boutin writes: "In 2009, Owen [Thomas, Valleywag Managing Editor] will be posting full-time, maybe 12-15 posts per day. Everyone else is fired... Denton's trying to follow Wired's footsteps: Take an insidery, localized publication and make it a national daily read."  read more »

Nick Denton published a screed today that warned media bosses, small and large, that the worst has yet to come. "From conglomerates to internet ventures, executives should be planning now on a decline of up to 40% in advertising spending during this cycle," he wrote. "Instead they're sleepwalking into economic extinction—even those lean online ventures which were supposed to take up the mantle and preserve New York's position as a media capital."

And Mr. Denton has put his words immediately into action. He's told us that Consumerist, his buyer self-defense blog, is up for sale.

In other news! The Gawker Media managing editor, Noah Robischon, is taking a job as an editor at Fast Company's Web site. Mr. Denton said he won't be replaced. Mr. Robischon's duties, which included budgeting, hirings and firings, design stuff, etc, will now rest in Mr. Denton's hands.

Nick Denton, out-going managing editor of Gawker, has just introduced a new feature to his Web site called The Unspiked Files.

According to Mr. Denton:

[M]agazine articles are often dropped not because they're bad but because they're good. Or—more often—simply because they've been overtaken by events or clash with some other article or because an insecure editor has over-commissioned... Anyway, here's an alternative for journalists who've spent weeks slaving on an article only to see it spiked: Gawker's unspiked files.

Writers are invited to send Gawker killed magazine pieces. Mr. Denton continues, "we won't be providing financial compensation (and you have already been paid a kill fee, after all) but we'll run your article in full and promote in links any book or other project." 

Sounds like a good idea.  read more »

Former New York Times Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman has a post on her WaxWord blog about last week's lay offs at Gawker Media. After worrying a bit about how the company's pay-for-pageview system encourages bloggers to "reach deeper into the gutter" for traffic, Ms. Waxman offers this tantalizing short history of the internet mixed with some Faith Popcorn-esque future forecasting:

The online world is changing and evolving, and quality is the next big thing. When the internet superhighway first debuted, it was pornography that drew all the eyeballs and clicks. The next wave was the independent bloggers—the likes of Wonkette, and Gawker and Defamer. As those got bought up by bigger companies, or grew into bigger companies, we've been flooded with attitude. Aggregation, and attitude. What about some well-reported facts, surrounded by intelligent analysis, in a timely manner? That's what we're hungry for.  read more »

Wednesday evening, Gawker Media hosted a party at Soho House in honor of the soon-to-be-released film version of How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, Toby Young’s memoir of his misadventures as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair in the late '90s. Half of the crowd kept referring to the celebration as a book party, despite the fact that the book in question had been released over six years ago. Indeed, the film did seem to take a backseat, as the room was full of media types eager to speak with Mr. Young, who did not arrive until late.

However, our first conversation was with a different type.  read more »

Since The Los Angeles Times decided to lay off 135 people—100+ people for the second time this year—its PR brass has been trying to distract the media with other, happier news. Yesterday, with a nice link from Romenesko, the Times announced that it had its biggest Web-traffic month ever with 127 million page views in July.

Every piece of publicity that comes out of the paper is issued from Russ Stanton, the paper's editor of six months, who had previously been in charge of latimes.com. Naturally, a lot of it will be latimes.com-related (if it's not about traffic, the news is always about new blogs).  read more »

That news about Moe Tkacik joining Radar? Never mind.

Apparently, Ms. Tkacik has changed her mind and rejected the offer from Radar. She'll leave Jezebel and begin writing for her company's flagship site, Gawker.com.

Reached by Media Mob, Radar editor Maer Roshan, who is currently not in the office, told us that the memo he sent out to the Radar staff announcing she was hired—writing that she will "bring her unique style and voice to a wide variety of topics from entertainment to politics, business and economy to world affairs. I'm confident that her strong reporting experience and her uncanny ability to analyze trends and events will allow the site to offer a broader perspective on pop, politics, scandal, and style"—was "probably" premature and claimed that it was not actually written by him, but his assistant.  read more »

A source deep inside the Gawker Media empire forwards us the news that there are big changes to Nick Denton's blog empire. In an email message from Mr. Denton to his staff—which he pre-emptively encourages them to leak—he announces a pair of sites being sold another being spun off.

Email from Mr. Denton follows:

I'm amazed we've managed to keep a lid on this news; that, given your naturally gossipy natures, must be a first! We're spinning off three sites: Idolator, Gridskipper and—this one may be a surprise—Wonkette. There were indeed some rumors about Maura Johnston's music blog late last year; they were true of course. For reasons that I'll explain below, both it and our travel and politics sites have better commercial futures outside Gawker than within. (Excuse the corporate lingo: some of it is unavoidable.) But, first, the facts, which will be hitting the wires later this morning, or as soon as you leak this email. Go ahead!  read more »

Gawker has a new home at 210 Elizabeth Street, and it's on the fourth floor! Sheila McClear is a big fan of the new place, which includes a telephone booth—Gawker's very own crying room.

Over at Radar, Neel Shah is reporting that Tina Brown is partnering with Barry Diller to develop what Ms. Brown called "a new take on an aggregator website."

Edward Felsenthal, a former editor of the Wall Street Journal, will be the editor. There aren't many other details—Brown didn't give a launch date, or really any specifics—but apparently there will be no "ideological stance."  read more »

Gawker media reporter Maggie Shnayerson was laid off last night. Nick Denton, managing editor of the site and owner of parent company Gawker Media, confirmed the break-up.

"He basically said page views were not meeting his expectations for the site," Shnayerson later said, when we contacted her about the split.

She said she was told about the firing via an email that arrived last night; Shnayerson was as of today the longest-serving editor presently appearing on Gawker's masthead; she's been working there since September.  read more »

One day after being announced as a "media reporter" for Gawker, Richard Morgan has quit—and dished to New York magazine's Daily Intel about the experience. Choice quote: "Jesus spent three days in Hell. I could only handle one."

And of course, Nick Denton has responded, in similarly unconciliatory terms.

Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media, will take over as managing editor of the company's flagship site, Gawker.com, The New York Times reports, citing three employees.

Mr. Denton had been looking for a replacement since Choire Sicha resigned as managing editor at the end of last month, and indicated in a job listing for the position that he wants the site to break and develop more stories.

Around 9pm at the New Museum on Bowery, Radar editor Maer Roshan, dressed in an extremely well-fitting John Varvatos suit, was standing next to the bar. The suit was dark, but it wasn't entirely clear what color it was in a dimly lit room on the ground floor.

Mr. Roshan's magazine was throwing a party intended to honor "the most exciting rogues, renegades, and rule-breakers of the year." Film-maker Craig Brewer, writer Shalom Auslander, and Squid and the Whale star Jesse Eisenberg, among other rogues, renegades, and rule-breakers, were in attendance.

As Mr. Roshan surveyed the room, he considered the best time of year to host a party. "Summer, I think."  read more »

On Friday, Nov. 30, readers of an item on Gawker.com which was nominally about author and editor Keith Gessen were told that the Web site's managing editor, Choire Sicha, and editor Emily Gould were quitting.

On Monday, Dec. 3, nightlife editor Josh Stein told The Media Mob, he'll do the same.

"The reasons I'm quitting are kind of personal," he told Media Mob on Sunday night. "It has nothing to do with the job. I'm actually really happy with the job."  read more »

Adam Moss stood with a glass in champagne in one corner, Look Book's Amy Larocca was in another, and social princess Ally Hilfiger was sitting on a plush couch catching up with old high school friends ("We took retarded math!" exclaimed one. "Like, we did decimals" she replied). But as for familiar editorial faces, there was only a handful last night at the Bowery Hotel, as Mr. Moss' New York magazine celebrated its newly published Look Magazine with a party for fashion and advertising types.

New York publisher Lawrence Burstein, who went much of the night without a drink, and didn't look to be having much fun, said that his magazine goes without any competition, but also said that he reads Vanity Fair, The Economist and The New York Times Magazine.

Lockhart Steele and Nick Denton were sitting at the bar as the free drinks came to an end around 8:30. Asked about the lack of familiar media faces, a New York spokeswoman said, "Well, we can't invite everyone."

AIM IM with [NICK DENTON] 7:35 PM [THEMEDIAMOB] May I briefly interview you about something? [NICK DENTON] sure [NICK DENTON] well, depending [THEMEDIAMOB] Did you do the Valleywag post about the NYT submitting questions to Google via e-mail? [NICK DENTON] yep [NICK DENTON] well, it came via a tip [NICK DENTON] but I wrote it up, yes [THEMEDIAMOB] But you're not that crazy about the face-to-face interview yourself, right? [NICK DENTON] well, I don't mind IM -- which is how we're speaking now -- and I don't remember asking you to submit your questions! [THEMEDIAMOB] Isn't IM just sort of a hight-speed way of getting questions pre-submitted? Or is it the routing of the questions through a flack that makes the difference? 7:40 PM [NICK DENTON] Unfortunately, I don't have the power that Google has. [NICK DENTON] So I couldn't pre-vet questions, even I wanted! [NICK DENTON] Anyway, a publisher, moonlighting as a gossip hound, writing about the press relations between two giant companies that also have a complex business relationship -- the conflicts boggle the mind. [THEMEDIAMOB] And the New York Times press office itself routinely asks for questions in writing. 7:45 PM [NICK DENTON] and I need to do my last post of the day, and a screengrab of this IM chat seems like an easy win [NICK DENTON] how meta is that! [THEMEDIAMOB] Still, I note that you were able to get away with not quite answering my question about the difference between IM and e-mail questions. [THEMEDIAMOB] I was going to put it on the blog myself. [NICK DENTON] okay, race you! [THEMEDIAMOB] You have the technological advantage.

UPDATE: Low-graphics wins! Valleywag posts at 8:03 p.m., 9 minutes after the Media Mob.

This morning, two men staked out the Gawker offices at 89 Crosby Street, according to Lockhart Steele, managing editor of Gawker media.

A man named Michael, owner of Tungsten Properties, wouldn't give his last name when we called to ask him about it, though he admits he showed up at the door of the company looking for Steele.

Steele said Michael called the Gawker offices and sent him a text message and called him, asking him to take down a post on the real-estate blog Curbed. (In addition to being managing editor of Gawker media, owned by Soho web titan Nick Denton, Steele is a founder of Curbed and a group of related sites devoted to architecture and food.)

The item of contention was a reader's comment, actually, on a post Curbed did about Time Out New York's cover feature, "The 50 Best Blocks in New York."

The reader wrote Curbed an email, purporting to work at Tungsten Properties, located at 13 Crosby, and said of the block of Howard Street between Broadway and Mercer Street (No. 19 on the Time Out list): "Number 19 is a fucking atrocity" and "a blight to Soho."

"This somehow triggered Armageddon for him [Michael]," Steele said.

And when Michael didn't get a response from Steele, he took it one step further and walked down the street to the offices to look for him--asking Denton and other Gawker employees for Steele and generally giving off a creepy, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" kind of vibe.

(Or weirder? One passerby said Michael "said he was furious he couldn't get a hold of anyone at Curbed ... that you can't just say someone hates black jews.")

Steele got the message they were there and called Michael, and asked him to go back to the Tungsten offices and draft a response to the post that was steaming them up.

"We've spoken to just about all of our agents at Tungsten Properties and none of them have written this," a source at Tungsten tells TRE. "This is very unlike us and not only do we love our neighborhood and we're working on investment site around the corner. We're very proud of our neighborhood and we wouldn't write it like that."

Steele refused to take the post down but has updated the contentious item with a statement from Tungsten (here).

- Gillian Reagan

Once upon a time—actually, eight months ago!—Vanity Fair published a spread on Gawker Media and its star bloggers. Honcho Nick Denton posed with the editors of Gawker, Gizmodo, Wonkette, and Defamer.

Since so much time has passed, The Transom thought it might be fun to investigate just where those youngsters all ended up!  read more »

The blogosphere just got more permanent: Gawker postings are now archived in Nexis, courtesy of something called "Newstex Web Blogs" [sic].

Gawker media chief Nick Denton expressed surprise about the arrangement. Asked about Gawker appearing in the database via instant message, Denton typed back, "It did?"  read more »

The postings come with a disclaimer from Newstex, which runs to more words than the average Gawker entry and explains that the views are "solely the author's." Full disclaimer after the jump.

With Courtney Love moving out, others are already staking claims on Crosby Street.

Fishbowl is reporting that Gawker Media chief Nick Denton is eyeing space at 89 Crosby Street as headquarters for his blogging empire.

Mr. Denton lives nearby at 76 Crosby Street, where Harvey Weinstein also resides. And with renovations currently underway in Kelly Ripa's duplex penthouse at 76 Crosby, the office might provide a nice refuge.

We're still waiting for a comment from Mr. Denton. Hopefully, he'll IM us back.  read more »

- Michael Calderone

On Sept.  read more »

** Exclusive! **SOURCES: WARREN BEATTY TO BLOG!  read more »

"Brits are the new blondes!" said British socialite and business entrepreneur Euan Rellie, flitting  read more »