jaggedlittlehelper

Besides breaking the gayometer with that statement, I hope no one misses the fact that Denton is in the business of selling bridges to suckers. There are plenty of gullible buyers on both sides of the river. They line up everyday. If you're reading this, you're one of them.

Take an honest look at Gawker Media these days. "Authentic" was purged from the style guide long ago and "selling out" means thank you very little to a multi-millionaire and his trust fund sidekick.

The reality is that Gawker Media sold out a long time ago by turning gossip coverage into the "commodity data" of Web 2.0. It's all churn and burn by numbers now. His properties don't stand out, loyal readership is falling, even if search generated traffic is on the rise, and it's all been primed for the big mainstream sell-off. If he doesn't cash in during 2007, then he wasted a lot of time devaluing a brand to make it more valuable.

Here's my prediction: he'll sell off Gizmodo/Lifehacker/Kotaku (they make a nice package under the consumer tech tree) and Jalopnik/Gridskipper to, I dunno, Triple-A or some shit. He'll keep the gossip blogs to throw parties, which are frankly much better when you're crashing them.

krucoff

And I was hoping that 2006's whithering nostalgia for Spy hadn't rubbed off on you! Sure, this "authentic" outsider angle presses the flesh and fleshes the press ("don't sell out" still somehow captures eyeballs), but everyone wants their recognition, even if it's off-character (off-brand?) to even give a modicum of acknowledgment.

But hey, I hope you don't answer the phone when Charles Townsend calls -- I sorta miss Spy too.

rex

Nick Denton

Nick Denton

I sorta doubt this actually will happen, but from a media biz perspective it makes complete sense.

rex

Anyway, I'm most curious what people think about the Amanda Congdon predix [#28]. No, I don't care how much you love or how much you hate her -- put you whack taste aside and try to guess if the show will catch on.

rex

Soup

Soup