Gawker

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 »

And here's the news that'll boomerang all over the Web logs today.

As has been speculated, Gabriel Snyder, most recently of W and formerly of The Observer, will be replace Nick Denton as Gawker's managing editor.

Gawker is also letting go 19 employees. We also hear that Moe Tkacik, who was brought to Gawker from Jezebel after she nearly left for Radar, is among those being let go.

Mr. Denton's memo after the jump:  read more »

Last night, nytimes.com played live video of the Biden-Palin debate on its home page, and Jon Landman is quite impressed that the Times pulled this off—he's also quite pleased that Gawker liked it, too. From his weekly memo:

Live, streaming video at the top of the homepage! If you doubt this is a significant achievement, we invite you to survey the Web sites of broadcast news organizations like CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, the BBC (and we could go on). They had live debate video, yes, via links. But not on their homepages.  read more »

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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 »

Media Mob just received the Summer 2008 issue of Russia!, the premier glossy for hip, young people of Russian descent. The cover features a striking drawing of newly installed Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, whose eyes seem to follow you across the room. Russia! editor Michael Idov penned the accompanying story, Meet the New Boss.

For the subset of people still fascinated by the personal life of former Gawker editor Emily Gould, her story on young Russian novelists—including, as her former website gleefully pointed out her ex-boyfriend, novelist Keith Gessen—is given a seven-page spread and the great headline, The Beet Generation.  read more »

This past winter, Paul Tough, a story editor at The New York Times Magazine, brought Emily Gould, a recently retired editor of Gawker.com, to the sixth floor of the paper’s skyscraper on Eighth Avenue. Sometimes, writers meet with the magazine’s editor in chief, Gerry Marzorati, and this was one of those times.

Mr. Marzorati had never before heard of Ms. Gould, he told Off the Record.  read more »

Emily Gould's New York Times Magazine cover story hasn't even landed with a thud on front porches and newsstands yet, but it's already garnering a ton of criticism online.

Some of the critical outlets weren't surprising.

Like Gawker, for example, since Ms. Gould's article is in many ways a rebuke of the site.

Gawker's first post officially linked to Ms. Gould's Times Magazine story received 9,133 views and 170 comments.

A follow-up post clocked in at 8,814 views with 149 comments, while a post announcing comments had closed on NYTimes.com received only 4,150 views and 83 comments.

Sadly, another, about the article's photos, topped out at only 2,556 views and 55 comments.

Finally, it seemed, for Gawker, the horse had been kicked to death.

New York magazine's Daily Intel had a wonkishly incisive post in which its editors calculated how many dollars Ms. Gould was presumed to have been paid for the words "I" and "me" in the 7,937-word article. (Eight hundred and sixty dollars, by Daily Intel's math. One wonders how many I's and me's were in New York's equally controversial first person cover story this week.)  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.

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 »

Sheila McClear, who covers the publishing industry for Gawker.com, is shopping a memoir about her time spent working in Times Square as a peep show girl.

The 26-year-old, who started as a reporter at Gawker in September, said she worked as a peep show girl for a brief period when she first moved to New York a little less than two years ago.

"I got interested in it -- obviously, it's a fascinating and weird milieu—and my book is about that experience!" Ms. McClear said, via instant message (the preferred mode of communication in Nick Denton's universe).

Ms. McClear said the book is called Every Day I Know Less and Less: Postcards From the New Times Square. Though she does not yet have an agent, she is working on the book actively, having recently completed a full-scale rewrite.

Ron Hogan over at the publishing blog GalleyCat reported earlier this afternoon that a Gawker editor was shopping a memoir.

A spokeswoman for Interview is denying that longtime editor Ingrid Sischy quit the magazine, which Gawker reported this afternoon.

"The Gawker item is absolutely not true," said Rachna Shah, a spokeswoman. "She is on her annual holiday in South Africa with Elton John. She has been working on the magazine while on holiday and is due back on Monday."  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.

Silicon Alley meets marketing meets journalism meets Hollywood: New York is the new capital of content, from Hudson Square to West Chelsea, SoHo to Midtown. Click on the photo for a tour ...

The n+1 essay referred to on Gawker this past Friday when managing editor Choire Sicha and editor Emily Gould abruptly announced their simultaneous resignation from the site has been posted online.

The essay puts forth a history of Gawker since its founding in 2002 and argues that it has since "outlived the conditions for its existence."

We don't really know what to say about this rapid-response Gawker post looking for a new managing editor in the wake of Choire Sicha's departure. Except that it's interesting to see the site subject to the same personnel issues, growing pains, internal disagreements, and existential crises that it so skilfully highlights in the rest of us.

So, buried at the end of this long post that's nominally about Keith Gessen's forthcoming book comes the news that Choire Sicha and Emily Gould are leaving Gawker.

Choire just confirmed the news to Media Mob.

The office was tiny and everyone at the party was sweating. Keith Gessen, one of the hosts, was pouring wine and opening beer behind a table while the n+1 extended family—mostly editors, journalists, and novelists who have supported the literary magazine since its birth in 2004—piled in and tried not to touch each other. Taken together they looked like a posse; most everyone had been to an n+1 party before, and despite the heat, they looked happy to be at another one.

The occasion on Saturday was the publication of a new n+1 pamphlet, What We Should Have Known, a primer for college students made up of two panel discussions about life in the academy, reading, and regret.

 read more »

Maggie Shnayerson is leaving her post as publicity director of the Village Voice for a reporting job at Gawker.com, crossing back over onto this side of the game for the first time since just after college.

Replacing Doree Shafrir (who starts at the Observer Monday!), Ms. Shnayerson will start at Gawker at the end of the month as an associate editor covering media.

Gawker editor Choire Sicha posted an item announcing the new hire early this afternoon. "We were most impressed with Maggie when dealing with her on stories about the Voice: She was a complete hardass. Kind of a bitch, in fact! But a superfun bitch," Mr. Sicha wrote. "This is a prime requirement for working here. I also liked that she has experience with how the business side of media things are run—and also a great ear for how PR spin is propagated."

"I know I'm going to miss her terribly," said Voice editor Tony Ortega this morning. "But I think she's got something really good going."

Observer contributor Niall Stanage, who is currently on assignment in Iran, sends an email for our "general amusement" to say that it is possible where he is to access the sites of the New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian and the Times of London, but that attempts to get to the New York Post, the Sun, Gawker or Wonkette are met with "a disappointingly literal 'Access to this Site is Denied' together with some Farsi script presumably saying the same thing."

   read more »