News for the foodie/NY blog scene: Ben Leventhal, co-founder of the influential Eater blog, is headed to GE’s NBC Universal, where he’ll oversee “lifestyle content” for NBC’s growing local Web unit.
Another scandal, another Gawker story, and another payday for the person who sold Gawker the news. No big deal, says Nick Denton, the blog impresario: We’ll keep doing it.
Earlier this year, Gawker Media’s Nick Denton announced that he was going to start paying for salacious clips, tips and other submissions, but that he hadn’t worked out the details. Looks like he figured it out: Denton says he paid the source who provided his blog network with the so-called “McSteamy” sex tapes that have earned him both a lot of traffic and a lawsuit.
The new Wondertablet the guys at Gizmodo showed off last night looks cool. But you can’t actually touch one right now unless you know someone very connected at Microsoft. But you know what you can touch? Today? A PC you control by shoving your hands in a box full of mud. All you have to do is get yourself to Gizmodo’s awesome gadget gallery in New York during the next few days.
Now that Bill Gates isn’t running Microsoft day to day, he is primarily focused on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is tackling big hairy problems like malaria. But apparently he still has enough time to moonlight as a free-lancer for Gizmodo.
The blog network owner says he’ll open his checkbook for readers who have amazing tales and pictures he can publish. He’s not talking TMZ money, yet. But “I’d love to have their reputation–as the place you go if you want to make a buck.”
I’m still on record predicting the demise of seattlepi.com–the online-only zombie version of the erstwhile Seattle Post-Intelligencer. My gut is that even though the Hearst-owned site has an edit staff 80 percent smaller than its predecessor paper, it still won’t be able to generate enough traffic and advertising to cover its costs. But while Hearst isn’t ready to declare victory, it does say that the first two months of seattlepi.com’s life have been “encouraging.” Via a press release, Hearst offers up a bevy of traffic stats that show the site has grown even as its staff has shrunk. Hearst doesn’t offer up any info about revenue, but does say that its “sales and marketing team is highly energized.” Good start.
Some people finish working for Nick Denton’s Gawker Media empire and do their best to never go back to blogging again. Not the veterans of Denton’s Defamer, the showbiz site he rolled into his Gawker flagship in February. The three men–Seth Abramovitch, Kyle Buchanan and S.T. VanAirsdale–are essentially reconstituting their old site, using the name and Web address of an even older site, Movieline.com.
What happens to the value of blogs when advertising craters and big media companies go into a tailspin? Take a guess. But a new list comparing top blog operations isn’t all bad news.
Here’s what should be the last step in Nick Denton’s slimdown of his Gawker Media empire: The blog network is taking its LA-based Defamer site and rolling it up under its central Gawker title. The site’s existing writers will leave, to be replaced by other Gawker writers and a new hire.
Think of how much time you spend on the Web when you’re gainfully employed. How much would that increase if you weren’t? Something to think about as you ponder data from a variety of sites reporting increased traffic in January–the same month that 600,000 Americans lost their jobs.
The steady drumbeat of bad news from the ad market doesn’t always sound the same: Today, for instance, one survey of financial Web sites estimates that revenues are down by as much as 30 percent this quarter. But Gawker’s Nick Denton says his sites are up 10 percent.
Gawker Media’s Nick Denton continues to shrink his blog empire: He has sold off Consumerist.com to Consumers Union, the nonprofit that publishes Consumer Reports. And he is in talks to sell Defamer.com.
The Gawker Media boss puts his Consumerist site up for sale and folds his Valleywag tech gossip site into his flagship Gawker gossip site. More moves to come. In fact, it wouldn’t be Denton if there were not more moves to come.
Gawker Media’s Nick Denton says publishers are still underestimating the coming ad collapse. Don’t believe him? Then look at the data from Jupiter Media–yet another online publisher who saw its business tank in the last quarter.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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