Nick Denton

As reported by Jim Romenesko, Denton admitted to his employees yesterday, "February 2009 wasn’t nearly as dreadful as it could have been.  A lot of sites struck traffic records — including io9, Gawker, Deadspin, Jalopnik and Jezebel.  In total, we drew 297m pageviews — some 34% over last February’s level and 50% up if you account for the sites we spun off in the meantime."

Gawker Media apparently saw an improvement in its bottom line, too, since Denton continued, "I’m not even going to tell you how much our ad revenues were up in February.  Because that rate of growth is in part a statistical fluke.  For the year to March, it looks like we could be as much as a fifth up over last winter."

And all of this becomes even more significant once you take into account the fact that February is usually a slow month.

Denton didn’t go so far as to sound the all-clear, of course; doing so while the Dow’s at a 12-year low would be irresponsible.  But we may have reached a point at which even one of our industry’s biggest pessimists is starting to feel secure.

Hat tip goes to Tameka Kee.

Defamer’s writers are moving on, and the column is being taken over by Gawker’s Richard Lawson and a yet to be hired reporter, while being supervised by managing editor Gabriel Snyder. Denton announced the changes yesterday afternoon, just in time to get it switched over before the Oscars (of which there is plenty of coverage of on Defamer).

"Gawker now draws more than 3m visitors a month — four times the audience it had in 2007," writes Denton on his blog. "More than three-quarters of Gawker’s readership is from outside New York. The inclusion of Defamer’s Hollywood gossip — following an expansion of political coverage last year and the incorporation of Valleywag — reflects Gawker’s evolution into a national gossip site."

Denton told the Wall Street Journal that he is hoping to get a nice boost to Gawker’s traffic by rolling Defamer into the site, just as he did with Valleywag last year. If nothing else, the timing was a good choice for the move – the biggest Hollywood gossip day of the year.

Speaking of the Oscars, YouTube and Google Book Search are both highlighting Academy Award content. You can see parodies and books that some of the films were adapted from.

For us, Wonkette lost its appeal once Ana Marie Cox left and Wonkette became a Wonk.

That and two other blogs, urban travel site Gridskipper and music blog Idolator, will have new homes. Valleywag editor Owen Wilson republished the formal announcement email from Denton about the cuts:

Why these three sites? To be blunt: they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did.

Everybody says that the internet is special; that advertising is still moving away from print and TV; and Gawker sites are still growing in traffic by about 90% a year, way faster than the web as a whole. But it would be naive to think that we can merely power through an advertising recession. We need to concentrate our energies, and the time of Chris Batty’s sales group, on the sites with the greatest potential for audience and advertising.

In dropping three of his fifteen blogs, Denton said in his email Gawker Media only gave up about 3 percent of its total audience. If the ad bubble really does burst, as Denton has been expecting for a couple of years, Gawker Media will be a little ahead of the retrenching everyone else will have to do online.

The focus of the debate right now is Gawker, where Nick Denton has apparently started paying his bloggers based in part on how many views their posts get. This one has been around for awhile, but now it’s official thanks to a memo on (Gawker-owned) Valleywag.

It’s also something that has come up before, including about a year ago when ZDNet said that it had started paying its writers on the same basis, i.e. a salary combined with a bonus based on traffic (I wrote a post about it at the time). And there have been other occasions as well, including when Business 2.0 magazine — which was then being run by Owen Thomas, now better known as the senior editor of Valleywag — started compensating writers based on their blog traffic.

In his memo, Nick says something that is very true about the difference between blogs and traditional media. While digital media gives editors or publishers the ability to track and compensate based on traffic:

“At newspapers, a reporter’s reputation depends on the opinion of their editors, which can be fickle. Some people get on because they play the office politics well. Or simply because they’re more aggressive in lobbying for more prominent jobs, or pay increases.”

The key question, of course, is whether rewarding bloggers for traffic is a good thing or a bad thing. One argument is that “incentivizing” bloggers to boost their traffic encourages them to make their posts more sensational, and will lead to them writing about nothing but Britney Spears or whatever they think people will be looking for, instead of deep and thought-provoking posts about serious issues. This is similar to the argument about people writing just because they want to show up on Techmeme.

The opposite argument is that it’s good to give writers a stake in the success of their blogs, something that encourages them to take an interest in their community. Will that encourage them to “sell out?” Perhaps. But maybe it will also encourage them to respond to comments, link to others who are discussing the same issues, and so on. Even former Gawker editor Choire Sicha thinks it’s not such a bad idea.

The bottom line is that — as Scott Karp notes at Publishing 2.0 — rewarding writers based on traffic is both good and bad. In some cases it will make that writer more engaged, and in others it will simply encourage them to post on whatever cheap train wreck is going on around them, hoping for a quick traffic boost. But I think in the long run it is likely to make them more intimately involved in their blogs, and more interested in developing a relationship with their readers, and that’s a good thing.

Comments

Blogs can be used to practice journalism, they can be used to practice drive-by celebrity character assassination, they can be used as a gigantic time-sink so as to keep people from doing real work (and occasionally, as in the case of The Smoking Gun, they can accomplish all three at once). They can be about serious subjects, with well thought-out opinions, or they can be the blitherings of a know-nothing with a typewriter.

Asking whether blogs can be journalism is like asking whether pencils can be used for journalism, or whether people who type can be journalists. Sure, they can, but that doesn’t mean they always are. You could make the same statement and replace the word “blog” with the word “newspaper.” Do all newspapers practice the rigorous, fact-based, dual-sourced journalism people think of when they use the word? Hardly.

What Nick Denton is looking for seems to be the prototype of a new kind of journalist, practicing something close to what Jeff Jarvis calls “networked” journalism (which Jay Rosen is also working on). An excerpt from the job posting Nick put up for a Gawker reporter:

“At its most elevated, the new Gawker hire may experiment with a new form of reporting, unique to online, in which ideas are floated, appeals made to the readers, and the story assembled over the course of several items, from speculation, and tips from users.”

Nick’s brand of Fleet Street-style journalism may not be to everyone’s taste, but there’s no question that it’s journalism. The fact is that until recently, only a small group of people had the tools required to engage in journalism. Now, the tools are virtually free, not to mention instantaneous. The combination of those two things has up-ended the journalism business — such as it was — and continues to do so.

Comments

I wrote about Gawker recently, after the site’s top writers left — including Choire Sicha and Emily Gould. Both said they were tired of the incessant snarking at Gawker, which likes to take shots at the rich and/or powerful (and in some cases whoever happens to wander into the crosshairs). And even Denton himself has said that he wants Gawker to break more news, rather than just sniping from the sidelines.

Something similar happened at Valleywag.com. Although the site was popular, it wasn’t a crucial read. Then Denton got rid of young Nick Douglas and took the reins himself as editor, until he lucked out and hired former Business 2.0 writer Owen Thomas. The new team have plenty of snark to throw around, but they also get scoops, and that’s the real secret (although in some cases they turn out to be less than, well… true).

Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 says Nick is one of those trying to create a different form of journalism. But the big question is the one posed by a commenter on the Valleywag post: Will Nick pay himself based on page views, as he recently started doing for his writers? According to several reports, that’s another reason that Sicha and Gould left.

Comments

According to a memo from Gawker exec Lockhart Steele (is that someone’s real name?) that was posted by Dealbook at the New York Times, Little Nicky was given the axe because he a) refused to stop giving interviews; b) refused to stop acting like he was a big player in the Valley scene; c) refused to stop mouthing off about how he really wanted to get sued, or d) all of the above.

“Anytime a writer settles in too closely with the subjects he/she’s writing about, there comes the inevitable tradeoffs: favor trading, and an elevated sense of one’s own importance to the field at hand. Both, to some degree, ended up being the case here. We were also concerned by Nick’s repeated misunderstanding of the purpose of our sites.”

Meanwhile, Nick Denton has made up for lost time by taking a few whacks at Federated Media’s John Battelle, as well as InterActive Corp. supremo Barry Diller, who Nick suggests is a) gay (although married) and b) interested in young men. Oh yes, and then there was the wonderful Dave Winer and NakedJen item. So much for cutting down on the sex at Valleywag, Nick.

Comments

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Mathew Ingram is a
technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national
newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at
www.mathewingram.com/work and www.mathewingram.com/media.

Personally, I liked the old look better and traditional valley reporters are abundant on the web. Oh well, I guess it’s all about the greenbacks.

Comments

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Douglas responded to their request for a comment but only with a short on the record statement:

My only on-record comments are:
“I still like Nick Denton.”
“I’m wide open for job and gig offers.”

Nick himself has also issued a statement at Valleywag saying that he is indeed open to lunch (prefers Italian and suhsi and especially wine).

So what will Douglas do?

10 Zen Monkeys speculates that maybe Douglas was going to do a deal with Rocketboom or Amanda Congdon but dismisses both after tracking down Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon.

They also point to Nick Denton speculating that Douglas may be going to Wired.

As for Denton’s side of things. He’s still being pretty tight lipped about Douglas although he seems to have at least rolled back the decision to take Valleywag in the direction of the Courier font. As one Valleywag reader, Blackjack, commented yesterday, “IBM just called from 1955, they want their Courier font back.”

So the site seems to be in an easier font to read today and Denton says that he is creating a mirror site of Valleywag in the old layout for those who would prefer it. Nick responds to the rest of the criticism here. As far as comments on Douglas though, Denton is leaving it up to Douglas to give the story, “It’s up to Nick Douglas to explain, as much as he wants to, and I think he may be making a farewell post, or jumping into this comment thread. And you can quiz him.” Which of course subsequently has happened.

So the million dollar question still remains.

What will Douglas do next?

Dave Winer’s name keeps coming up. He says a little bird told him that Douglas was going to get into video. Although Andrew and Amanda could always be lying of course, let’s explore the other video options that could be out there to Douglas.

All of this of course is just wild speculation. I have no knowledge of what Nick’s up to. But… if he is going to work in video there are a couple of other avenues that could be considered.

1. Nick makes the jump to actual broadcast TV. One of the things I’ve been noticing a lot lately is that Hollywood seems to be creeping into the Valley. At the GigaOm Xing party in San Francisco last month I spent some time talking to a couple of guys from the Hollywood crowd. They had flown up here and talked about Hollywood being interested in figuring out how to filter out the best of user generated video for mainstream TV. It’s also interesting to see folks like famous producer/director Jerry Zucker, from Airplane and Naked Gun fame show up at the Vloggies the weekend before last. Hollywood certainly seems to be sniffing around, and the right tech celebrity gossip show could be just the thing for them.

2. PodTech. Since hiring Robert Scoble, John Furrier has been building a powerhouse video network. PodTech already has the snarky Geek Entertainment TV. But could they, would they, push the envelope enough for a Nick Douglas style show? I love PodTech. I love doing photowalking shows over there with Scoble — but is PodTech the network for a gossip video? I will say that Scoble mentions Valleywag a lot.

3. Revision3. In September I wrote about Revision3 being the future of TV. The Revision3 team is already collecting some of the hottest shows on the internet. They are the highest profile cutting edge video blog network out there right now.

4. Nick goes independent on YouTube. Now this would truly be the interesting angle. It would have very little cost. Nick’s got a reputation at this point big enough to launch his own show. Why should Nick share the wealth with a network on an ongoing basis when he can build independent content himself. By staying independent this also gives him flexibilty it structuring future distribution deals while building up his popularity. Eventually when he found the right VC money he could launch at his own site, move the show over there. Note to VCs, I’d give Douglas a call and see what he’s up to.

5. Nick becomes a catalyst for a blog network to break into video. I would have thought Weblogs Inc. an interesting play. Calacanis could add video to his empire and distribute it though Netscape and the Weblogs Inc. channels. Of course this already seems unlikely as Douglas already has had a snarky exchange with Calacanis over Calacanis calling Douglas “Little Nicky.” Of course… what if that snarky little exchange though were *actually* planned. Think about *that* for a minute.

Still, Douglas has gone after Calacanis before and Calacanis has an awfully large ego and even if there were potential there the ego thing could be problematic. Then again, business is business.

6. CNET. Unlikely, but should be mentioned. Two problems here. The first is that CNET has had their own business troubles and probably wants to deal with those without a Nick Douglas distraction — they probably would also worry about the reputation of CNET News being tied to a gossip video blogger.

7. Wired could also get into video which might be behind Denton’s comments. Certainly pushing video content through Wired’s distribution channel could be interesting.

More likely than not Douglas really truly actually has not made up his mind about what he will do next — which is why if I worked in venture capital or video I’d probably be taking him up on that lunch offer.

Comments

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Thomas Hawk is a San Francisco based photographer and technology writer.
He publishes the web site Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection and is also
the Evangelist and CEO of the photo sharing site Zooomr.

Nick the Elder – i.e., Nick Denton, publisher of Valleywag and founder of Gawker Media – has taken over writing duties and Nick the Younger (the former writer for Blogebrity that Denton plucked from obscurity) has moved on.

Where has he moved on to? No word on that – nor on whether the young lad with the rapier keyboard was shown the door (something Denton has a habit of doing with his online proteges from time to time) or left of his own volition. Although since we are dealing with the king of rumour-mongering, I would be remiss if I didn’t pass on a rumour that he was looking at joining a video entity of some kind, a rumour that Dave Winer was circulating awhile back.

According to Denton – in an interview with Bambi Francisco from Marketwatch – he wants to make Valleywag more about financial gossip instead of just “about sex in the Valley.” He tells Bambi “it would have been nice to get the Google-YouTube deal” or some juicy stories about potential startup acquisitions, and that he’s working on a juicy scoop about John Battelle’s Federated Media. He says that he wants to boost Valleywag’s page views from their current level of about 20,000 (which seems surprisingly small to me).

For more on the brief career of Mr. Douglas, check out an interview R.U. Sirius did for 10ZenMonkeys – in which he talks about Kevin “Tailrank” Burton’s personal life and psychoanalyzes Cory “BoingBoing” Doctorow, among other things – and also a profile in Business Week magazine. Thomas Hawk of Zooomr has some thoughts on Nick’s departure, and wants to know more about it, but I think he’s wasting his time. Nick Denton is the Zen master of PR.

Update:

If this post about John Battelle losing Fark from its stable of properties is anything to go by, I hope Nick the Elder sticks around and writes for Valleywag permanently. Not that I didn’t enjoy Nick Douglas, but it’s exponentially more hilarious to hear Denton talking about how his relationship with Battelle is “passive-aggressive” and how he thought his book on Google was “sycophantic.” Battelle puts up his dukes here.

Comments

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Mathew Ingram is a
technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national
newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at
www.mathewingram.com/work and www.mathewingram.com/media.