Journalism Now » Gawker

Gawker adds another site to it’s portfolio

Admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:30:44 +0000

Gawker Media, the eight-year-old online publishing heavyweight founded by Nick Denton, announced its first acquisition on Monday: the New York boldface name guide CityFile. Mr. Denton would not disclose the sale price. He indicated in a memorandum that he had looked at other acquisition targets in recent months, and said “if online media is consolidating, we’d rather be a consolidator than consolidatee.” But he reiterated the company’s belief that it is “usually more effective to build than buy.” Remy Stern, the editor and publisher of CityFile, will become the editor of Gawker next week, replacing Gabriel Snyder, who said in a separate memorandum: “I’ll put this as plainly as we’d report any other masthead ouster: I am being canned.”
Read more about it here

Arianna Huffington Journalism Charity…self-promo stunt or a genuine cause?

Admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:50:53 +0000

When the Huffington Post announced a “collaboration” with donors to launch the “Huffington Post Investigative Fund” with an initial budget of $1.75 million back in March of last year, we were giddy with excitement at the thought of people still CARING about quality news. Today, John Cook of Gawker (who we think is usually right-on-the-money with his posts 85% of the time), wrote a piece slamming the fund as being nothing more then a tax write-off and a way for the Huffington Post to have “exclusivity on stories”. Our take on this? Way too early to say in our opinion, and we whole-heartedly admit we love the Huff Post.

The main issue to date, is that very few websites have benefited from the fund except for the HuffingtonPost, and here we are 10+ months after the announcement of the fund. With that being said, let’s give it some more time. It takes TIME to investigate stories….we’ll keep tabs on ‘em and post news as it develops(!)

Gawker does pie-chart analysis of NY Times “Paywall-Stakes”

Admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:46:50 +0000

Gabriel Snyder over at Gawker did a great pie-chart analysis of what the real “stakes” are if the NY Times starts charging for online readership in 2011, and what exactly the “metered” readership is all about.
I.E – if you read more then a certain number of stories, you’ll recieve a prompt (of some sort) to subscribe to the magazine (and/or) the website. (Ouch!) The clinch is, with as much free content being available online (as there currently is), will the NY Times succeed? God only knows, and NY Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has no idea either. So it’s all up in the air! Read more here