1. Stick to people and/or companies already famous on the Internet, either as Net celebs or because they're in today's news. Sergey and Larry doing anything is gossip — photos are even better. A bank intern would have to do something really crazy to be news.
2. Tell us something more specific than "She likes the booze." Tell us something unique and entertaining she did while drunk. Something David Duchovny would do on Californication.
3. When in doubt, hit Send. We'll sort it out. Some readers worry too much that we've already seen it. That's not a problem here. Worse, you might worry we'll cost you your job. That's a valid concern. But we've got over twenty years' total experience at protecting our sources for national publications. I know how not to "burn a source," in newsroom jargon, as reflexively as I know that I began the previous sentence with a conjunction. We know your manager reads us. It's in the server logs. So yeah, trust us. People say Valleywag will stab you in the back. That's a lie. Valleywag will only stab you in the face.
(Illustration by HowStuffWorks)

• Nicholas was the first to get a look at Yahoo's Buzz:
  Screenshots of Yahoo Buzz, a Digg competitor
• His historical analysis of why newspapers keep failing to grasp the online opportunity was widely read in the industry:
  5 ways the newspapers botched the Web
• He covered the craze for Facebook applications on its way up — and down:
  The Valley's Facebook frenzy fades
• Google's Chrome browser provided endless comedy:
  Uh oh, the b-tards got their hands on Google's Chrome comic
• He dug into what really made some tech gigs suck:
  Tech's 10 worst entry-level jobs
• The fiery implosion of Pay By Touch, a biometrics company, provided Carlson with one of his best ongoing stories. A former Pay By Touch employee recently complimented him for his work, telling me that his stories on Valleywag were the best source of information on what was happening to the company:
  Pay By Touch story archive
• And most recently, Nicholas uncovered the love connection behind Michael Arrington's MySpace scoops:
  Michael Arrington pounding his MySpace source

• Melissa's debut column was not afraid to be servicey — and also telling about the Valley's peculiar sex culture:
  How do I get a Stanford girl to blow me?
• The first question Melissa got asked: "No one actually goes to sex parties in the Valley, do they?" The second: "Can you get me in one?" That prompted a column:
  Sex parties in the Valley — how do I get invited?
• The sexographics of the Web's top companies:
  Googlers getting laid way more than Microsoft, Yahoo
• We called the SXSW conference in Austin "spring break for geeks." Melissa lived it:
  The art of the SXSW orgy
• Melissa tackled the Web's relentless misogyny with wit:
  Five reasons why women really do need to get off the Internet
• And she also critiqued the media's writing about the business of sex with an insider's eye:
  How the New York Times missed the latest escort scandal
• My all-time favorite?
  
  How to lie to your friends with Web 2.0

• An expert in online video from his film-school days and his stint at NewTeeVee, Jackson was not afraid to be servicey when the Olympics rolled around:
  The definitive guide to watching the Olympics online
• Jackson was one of the first to publish the news that sex blogger Violet Blue had been unpublished:
  Blogger completely deleted from Boing Boing archives
• Apple cofounder, cable-TV star? Jackson knew pageview gold when he saw it:
  Steve Wozniak and Kathy Griffin all broken up
• The surreal estate of the Valley's rich and famous was a constant obsession:
  Larry Page's $7 million manse
• Who needs venture capital when you've got a trust fund?
  How daddy's money paid for Andrew Baron's Rocketboom
• Jackson and I loved to disagree about San Francisco's gay-marriage- and hair-gel-loving mayor:
  The east coast's love affair with Gavin Newsom
• Google executive Marissa Mayer was this site's first obession, but Jackson's fashion sense took his critiques to a new level:
  Marissa Mayer and friends on display at department store
• Who can forget the time Jackson got TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington a milkshake? Readers drank it up:
  Michael Arrington drinks Valleywag's milkshake

I have some bad news. Here's the heart of it: we are cutting 19 of our 133 editorial positions and suspending bonus payments at the start of next year. With the savings, we are increasing base pay and hiring 10 new people on the most commercially successful Gawker sites. But I know that's scant consolation for the colleagues we're losing and for those of you who have been enjoying the bonus windfalls from breakout stories.

You can guess the reason for these brutal measures: the recession. Sure, the company is currently profitable and advertising sales are up by about 30% on their level of a year ago. Our biggest clients are consumer electronics and entertainment companies that are relatively well insulated. And, yes, this is not the first time I've predicted doom: in July 2006, when we "battened down the hatches" and closed down Sploid and Screenhead; and in April this year, when we spun off Idolator, Gridskipper and Wonkette.

But now the credit crisis is clearly going to affect every sector of the economy. Advertising buys typically plunge after the Christmas shopping season, and 2009 is obviously going to be exceptionally difficult. We have to prepare for the worst, now, rather than when the worst comes upon us.

We never used to talk about the business side of the operation. Traffic was the only concern; my belief was that juicy news would draw the readers and the advertising would take care of itself. We were patient; even if it took four years for a site to develop the audience that finally registered with advertisers, we had the time. No longer.

Sites such as Consumerist, whose success has been measured more in traffic and recognition than in revenue, now need to cover their costs. I can't underline enough that this harsh commercial judgment is no reflection whatsoever on the editorial teams that are being cut.

Each of these sites performs a vital function. Consumerist provides an outlet for disgruntled consumers that exists nowhere else on the web; Valleywag has given puffed-up Silicon Valley the prick it's long needed; and Fleshbot manages to be classy and filthy at the same time. The site leads and writers on all of our sites have done exactly what we asked them to: work harder than the competition and grow the audience. It's my commercial judgment that's been at fault.

One reason we're eliminating these positions is to reinforce the teams on the sites with the most commercial appeal—Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker and Gawker—and the properties such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Jalopnik which are poised to join them.

One new recruit we're confirming today is Gabriel Snyder from W Magazine in Los Angeles who, as managing editor of Gawker.com, will continue the site's evolution into a national news and entertainment site. We are also hiring new contributors at Jezebel, Deadspin, Kotaku and io9.

Even in the growing editorial teams we need to control costs. And that means a new look at traffic bonuses. We've been spending $50,000 a month on average on pageview bonuses. The scheme has made writers hustle for traffic even in teams so large that there was a risk they become lumbering. It's helped us hit a record 274m pageviews last month, up 69% on last September.

Pageview bonuses will continue this quarter. And we are committed to pageview incentives, and to measuring performance by a writer's individual pageviews, in the long term. But a first quarter spike in traffic — and the resulting bonus payments — could be dangerous if advertising markets are troubled next year. And we're assuming that the economy is so volatile that most of you would like a little bit more predictability about your own income.

That's why we're suspending the pageview bonus for the first quarter at least, but making up for some of the loss of income by raising pay. If you haven't recently agreed to a new rate, your monthly base amount will automatically be increased by 5% in January.

The news about the job and bonus cuts will be demoralizing. The golden age of the blog is over, people will say. Gawker Media is behaving like those big media companies that we mock so easily. I could come up with some bullshit line about how much worse it would have been to wait until we were forced to control costs; or how much more unpleasant life will be at the many internet ventures and newspapers that won't make it through the downturn. I could give you my optimistic spin about the glorious future that awaits us on the far side of this downturn.

But there is no escaping the fact that we're losing some excellent colleagues and the environment next year will be bleak. The one consolation is that there will be plenty of news for us to break — starting with this email, which you are free to leak.

Desperately wanting to find spin, I went to the Silicon Valley gossip site, Valleywag, which makes no qualms about writing stories with its own snarky spin. Yet calling PR people “the most annoying people in our inbox” did not raise any red flags on SpinSpotter. Writing that Rupert Murdoch is “not going to have any luck recruiting an outsider to fill the spot” of MySpace China chief executive wasn’t spin either.

What Miller deems "spin," we call "stating the obvious." But we're pleased as punch to have the paper of record declare, on the record, that Valleywag is spin-free. As a further test, perhaps it should run SpinSpotter on Miller's blog post.

Or, better yet, SpinSpotter should test its own rhetoric. The startup has made much of the fact that one founder is conservative, another liberal. But both have a clear bias: They are technologists, prone to think that they know how the world works. Media is assembled just like code, SpinSpotter seems to say, and automated tests can reveal the bugs. That only works if you assume you're smarter than everyone else. We'll indulge in a biased stereotype: Sounds like most programmers we know.

Can we just say it? Julia has the buzz and attention these second-tier bloggers and video makers have dreamt of for years, and they can't stand it. Maybe you guys need to wipe off that mirror on your laps and take a good hard look. Over here, we're nothing but grateful for her success — Wired's Allison story, sure to be read by hundreds of thousands of our kind of people, namechecks Valleywag five times. (Photo by Brian Solis)

Step 1, get noticed. Julia discovered a niche, positioned herself at its choke point, and stayed there until people started to notice. Gawker. A complicated symbiosis was born. Allison could cross "become a cult figure" off her to-do list. Step 2, keep them hooked. Valleywag ran photos of Allison canoodling. "I can't do this anymore. It's ruining my life," she wrote. More than 17,000 readers on her site that day, a new record. Step 3, extend your brand. Newly reinvented as a tech-world ingenue, Allison began entertaining plans to launch her own business. Signed up two friends to act as cofounders of the site — nonsociety.com. Even if her new site is good for nothing more than providing continued fodder for the cannons that are pointed at her, that will be its own kind of success.

(Photo by Platon/Wired)

I also did not sleep with Xeni Jardin, though via someone I've slept with who slept with Blue, I'm only one more degree of separation from her bed. And if you hop a few lovers, it's almost like I've slept with another Boing Boing editor, Cory Doctorow. What I do have to disclose: It was Xeni Jardin who forwarded me Paul Boutin's original search request for a new Valleywag reporter, back in January. Founding Valleywag editor Nick Douglas is the only one around Valleywag that I do fuck, and that's never bought him a break from our standard abuse. Plus it's fun.

I'm avoiding that show with a ten foot pole. I have given Nick's show press in the past, and they inevitably failed miserably. So for his sake, I ain't gonna jinx it.

But why should we worry about all that? Check out Episode One, below. If BWC lasts even one-sixth as long Douglas's last venture, Goggleburn, Episode Two comes out next week.

Axe Mouth Spray from Nick Douglas on Vimeo.

After two years of playing footsie with Valleywag, I've finally been hired full time to write for what these kids call The Olds — that means winning over Fleetwood Mac fans and Fortune subscribers. Waist-high ace reporter Kara Swisher goaded me to start my first full day today with a journalistic "disclosure" statement like hers. She assured me that coming clean of my conflicts of interest would assuage Internet geezers suspicious of eww bloggers. Ok, but just this once. I hate journalism about journalism, plus I need to get back to nagging Arnel Pineda for an interview.

• Like Kara, I have an overachieving wife with a real tech job — she's a vice president at Splunk. California's trophy-spouse-friendly property laws award me exactly half of Christina's stock earned during our marriage. Even if she dumps me. Has that colored Valleywag's coverage of Splunk CEO Michael Baum? Of course it has: Splunk gets extra hate. I'm sure passive-aggressive Valleywag chief Owen Thomas will do his best to keep my Splunk shares worth 50 percent of nothing for as long as possible so I can't afford to quit on him. (UPDATE: See, I told you so.)
• Wired editor Chris Anderson, whom I think the world of even though he fired me once, offered stellar advice: "Let others take the cheap shots." Way to spoil my fun again, Chris, but you're right. I'm going to push everyone here to step up to our motto, "Valleywag will never stab you in the back. We'll stab you in the face." If we ever write about you, it'll be so deservedly true that you'll pine for the days of the cheap shots.
• Dear corporate spokespeople: Standard public relations procedure in the Valley is to blow off reporters who seek your boss to confirm a totally-true rumor with the canned statement, "Mr Founderbot is traveling and cannot be reached for comment." It's the worst lie imaginable. A high-tech CEO who can't be reached. Many traditional news publications' rules require them to quote this bullshit. I'll just post my story. Traveling Man can add a comment if he ever comes back.
• Valleywag's ethics rules are on a wiki. I'll stop there.

Valleywaggers,

As I've told you all personally, I've fired Jordan Golson. It's a sad decision; I will always be grateful to Jordan for contributions like the kicker "That seems easier" and the tag "We read Twitter so you don't have to"; but the parting was, perhaps, overdue.

In its wake, I wanted to reinforce some points I mentioned in our conversations:

1) Valleywag hasn't had any budget cuts. I'm sure the usual bloggers who blog about blogging will find a way to prove otherwise by counting the number of posts about Scoble or something, but they're wrong. Both Melissa and Paul will be posting more than previously.

2) If you read elsewhere that Denton only cares about pageviews now, they're wrong. If we've given you that impression, we're sorry. Here's a straightforward list of our priorities, starting with the most important:

* Covering the news of the day that's vital to the Valley — artfully, distinctively, and completely
* Giving our readers insight and insideriness they won't get anywhere else
* Telling the story of the Valley as a human one, not as a series of dry tech trends or stock tips

3) We have an opening for a Valley-based reporter. To be clear, this is not a replacement slot for Jordan Golson. It is a more senior role, for someone with deep Valley sources and a passion for Valleywag's mission.

Yours,

Owen

Owen Thomas, the managing editor of Valleywag, has a succinct way of summarizing his editorial philosophy. "Is there anybody I haven't offended?" he asked. Probably not. San Francisco-based Valleywag, a blog that bills itself as a "tech gossip rag," delights in exposing Silicon Valley's pompous and hypocritical icons and publicity-hungry wannabes. "Silicon Valley is built on delusions. You don't have to be a hateful person to report the truth. Some people say Valleywag will stab you in the back. That's a lie. Valleywag will stab you in the face. We say what's necessary."

From: Jason Calacanis

put some math your 9k blog post..... if you're going to bust my chops about something please don't let it be revenue, because i got that on lockdown for a decade.

http://valleywag.com/376042/tipster-mahalo-revenues-are-around-9000-a-month

respek!

best j

ps - Denton is probably losing 2-3k a month on you guys so don't be surprised if he pulls the plug if you can't get to 10m pages. unless of course Valleywag is his own personal way of breaking chops in the valley, which i think it is. then you guys got a gig for a long time.

the biggest part of Denton's scam... i mean business model... is that 90% of traffic to Gawker sites is to the homepage or RSS feeds where you guys get nothing.

so, you can basically take the $7.50 rate and assume 10-20% of that is your actual cut of the posts value.

that being said, it's the best pay in the business... prob. on par with or better than Weblogs, Inc. depending on the blog/person.

Denton was plotting the pay system for two years... it's really amazing that it's come to pass. It's inspiring to see someone cut the business down to it's core and i'm loving watching the results. Some brands will be destory by folks like Jordan who know how to game pageviews, others will boom and make denton sick margins and tens of millions when he sells the brands out from under you guys.

best j

• Our Sitemeter link hides in plain sight at the very lower left corner of the front door.
• Our internal stats counters report daily and monthly pageviews by author. There are three Paul Boutins listed. This explains my schedule.
• We also run Google Analytics, but I'm too chicken to publish our password. There's always That One Guy Who Ruins Everything. If you know a way to autopublish a read-only GA chart, please fill me in.

The rate that my employer, Gawker Media, pays its contract writers was adjusted tonight at midnight. A "modest reduction." We'll find out the new pay plan by the end of the week. Writers are expected to continue working. No matter how much traffic their posts generate, writers will receive at least their base. On top of that, productive writers can receive a "Pageview Bonus," which varies depending on which site they write for. If I were a salesperson, I'd expect to know my quarterly sales goals well in advance.

Silicon Valley gossip site to become part of Yahoo!'s starting point strategy.

Yahoo! today announced it will make an unsolicited takeover bid to purchase Valleywag, the Silicon Valley technology gossip site, as part of a push to increase "starting points" for consumers.

"Though I, personally, haven't always seen eye to eye with its editors," said Blake Jorgensen, CFO of Yahoo!, in a message to employees," we are well aware of how many people start their online experience with Valleywag and hope that as part of the Yahoo! family, we can all just get a long."

Often called "Yahoowag" for its constant coverage of Yahoo! gossip, no matter how minor or incorrect, the pairing of the two is expected to be immediately accretive to Yahoo!'s earnings - especially when considering Valleywag's daily readership that some estimate in the "hundreds."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. No reaction to the offer has been heard from Valleywag editors who, for once, have been strangely silent.

Gawker writers are each assigned a "Monthly Base" pay. No matter how much traffic their posts generate in a month, writers will receive at least their base. On top of that, productive writers can receive a "Pageview Bonus," which varies depending on which site they write for. All Gawker sites are assigned a "pageview rate". Any amount of traffic a writer generates over their minimum is paid as "bonus." By comparing their monthly base to the pageview rate of their site, a writer can determine how many pageviews they need to generate per month or, if they exceed their minimum, how much they're getting paid in total. A leaked memo explains the whole process in great detail.

For example, my monthly minimum pay rate works out to 256,000 page views a month. If I deliver under that, I'm (theoretically) reprimanded and encouraged to write more popular posts. To determine my pay for a particular day or month, I multiply my total page view count by Valleywag's pay rate. Our contract is pretty standard fare for performance-based pay, offering a "monthly base" and a "page view bonus." However, Valleywag's writers have soundly beaten their minimum post counts all three months we've had this program in effect. Our page view rate is our de facto pay rate.

Since this plan was announced in late December, we've known that the pay rate is to be changed on the first day of every quarter. I expected to be informed of the pay rate before the month started, but that hasn't happened, even after repeated requests to my superiors. We're working in the digital equivalent of a sweatshop, effectively being paid based on how many views we can drum up — and now the goalposts are being moved mid-kick. This is unnerving and a slap in the face to the "creative underclass" that writes for Gawker's blogs.

If a potential advertiser asked Gawker to start running its ads and promised to negotiate terms later, they'd be laughed out of the room — but that is exactly what the company is asking of its writers. If I were a salesperson, I'd expect to know my quarterly sales goals well in advance.

Gawker Media is, let's not forget, a for-profit business. The company might need time to make proper pricing decisions. But that goes both ways: Writers are for-profit as well and we should not be expected to work blind.

And, no, this is not an April Fools' joke.

(Photo by Hey Paul)

• "This is a business where every minute counts," Lam wrote.
• Like a couple of rival hometown newspapers, Engadget and Gizmodo have seen their competition develop into a full-blown feud, complete with charges of malfeasance and sabotage. Gizmodo's publisher, blogging impresario Nick Denton, has accused Engadget of being "amateurish" and "gullible."
• [Engadget editor] Ryan Block, for his part, offered only minimal comment for this story: Lam is a former Wired contributor and assistant editor, and Block said he was concerned that Lam's relationship with the magazine would prevent Engadget from getting a "fair shake." He even forbade Engadget employees from talking to me at CES.
• "They have audience, and they have influence. They are right up there with Walt Mossberg." As a Samsung spokesperson puts it: "Gadget blogs are the future of the world for us."
• "They have to figure out what they want to be when they grow up," says David Pogue, who reviews technology for The New York Times and reads both blogs regularly. "And they are going to continue to stub their toes along the way."
• Despite the heated competition, neither site appears to be damaging the other's popularity. Most business battles revolve around a scarce resource — audience or customers or money. But in this case, the battle for readers is not a zero-sum game. "Nothing stops people from going to both," says Jeff Jarvis, media blogger and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. "This is a natural state of media. It's good for everyone."
• Victories and bragging rights are won in seconds. Lam talks about renting a different apartment so he can be on a FedEx route that receives deliveries before Block.
• Engadget is cool and straitlaced. (One typically direct headline: "Sprint Announces Massive Layoffs, Store Closings Amid Subscriber Defection.") Gizmodo revels in cheap jokes and hedonism. Its writers regularly proclaim their love of alcohol, marijuana, and Jessica Alba. Las Vegas would seem to be a very dangerous place for them.
• Around 5 pm, Jason Calacanis — who cofounded Engadget's parent, Weblogs, Inc., and sold it to AOL in October 2005 — inadvertently wanders into Gizmodo territory. Calacanis immediately spouts off: "Fuck Gizmodo. Engadget rules." Then he throws up three fingers twisted into the shape of an E, the Engadget gang sign.

  Calacanis' outburst is a reminder of what really motivates both sites — more than money or prestige, it comes down to a frat-like rivalry, driven by boyish egos and measured in pageviews.
  

• Richard Blakeley, a cameraman for Gawker Media and Gizmodo, was armed with a little device called TV-B-Gone. He prowled the floor, extinguishing the demos and displays that are CES' lifeblood. Four days later, however, Lam posted a story titled "Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES," which included a video documenting the escapade.

  Four days after he uploaded the clip, he posted a response to his many critics: "Bloggers and trade journalists, so desperate for a seat at the table with big mainstream publications, have it completely backward ... No matter how much access the companies give us, we won't ever stop being irreverent."

  Not as long as it pays off. The TV-B-Gone video received some 679,000 views by February 22, making it Gizmodo's most popular CES story.

New strategy for dealing with Nick Denton: everyone give him a HUGE 30second hug. We will hug the love back into him (nick carlson's idea!)

For the record, Valleywag is seeking to raise $10 million. What? For an equity stake in this blog? Are you an idiot? Nick Denton doesn't toss around shares like that Craig Newmark twit. We're hoping someone will just give us the goddamn money and go away.

A few weeks ago, we wrote a story about humorous headline aggregator Fark.com. That story was then submitted to Digg. Partially as a joke and partially to see what would happen, Fark.com founder Drew Curtis linked to the Digg post, rather than to the original story.

By sending thousands of his readers to the Digg page, Curtis singlehandedly pushed the story to Digg's homepage Success! Instant traffic and a new grill for me. So, is there any way Digg can account for this? Not easily. It's difficult to tell "authentic" Diggs from "gamed" Diggs when you have thousands of readers showing up at a page out of the blue. The site could check referring links and discount the votes if a ton of clicks come from one place — but it's not exactly spam. It's almost the same as using Digg's own "shout" mechanism to ask your friends to Digg your link.

I can't wait to hear from all kinds of so-called "social media" consultants about why this strategy won't work for their clients. Here's a question: If they're so smart, why aren't they tight with Drew?

"I'm absolutely unshocked and I can't believe anyone in the media is shocked that a politician is hiring prostitutes," Gira said. "Especially for someone in a position of power it's a value proposition to hire a prostitute rather than have a mistress. What you're buying is discretion."

Were you there, too? Or just want to add a caption? Leave a comment here or on the photo page.

(Photo of McCarthy and Thomas by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid; Loren Feldman and Owen Thomas by Brian Solis; gallery by Noah Robischon)