Last night, around 7 o’clock, I saw a report about Gawker Media. In the WIRED post, their restructuring was detailed, and they also talked about how they laid off some staff as part of this initiative. I’ll get to the way they unceremoniously fired their workers in just a bit, but first, let’s talk about the shift.
From the WIRED piece…
After a tumultuous year, Gawker Media—known for its gossip, commentary, and sharp takes on the news of the day—is refocusing and reorganizing for 2016. In two internal memos released today, Gawker founder Nick Denton and executive editor John Cook revealed plans to sharpen the focus of the site’s seven main verticals, including Gawker.com and Gizmodo, while killing sub-sites and laying off several employees…
The most dramatic shift for the company will come to its flagship site Gawker.com, which will be moving away from covering news and gossip more generally to focusing on politics, specifically the 2016 presidential election and related campaigns…
Sister site Jezebel, known for its coverage of women’s issues, will “become the primary voice for celebrity and pop culture.”
The Jezebel shift is particularly hilarious, since it’s supposed to be this feminist hub. Now, they’re going full Hollywood tabloid. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. I enjoy trashy tabs like that myself sometimes, but it’s just funny given the previous tone of the site. If you had been watching their coverage recently, it’s not really a surprise. But now they are officially announcing the switch.
Damn, Jezebel is getting gutted lmfao. Fucking hilarious. Now it's gonna be a full-time celeb site, looks like.
— Ethan Ralph (@TheRalphRetort) November 18, 2015
The New York Times also talked about all this, in a report of their own…
The broader changes to Gawker Media follow a controversy over the summer after Gawker.com published an article about a married male executive who was apparently seeking a liaison with a male escort.
Faced with widespread criticism, including threats to withdraw advertising, the site removed the article. Two of the company’s senior editors — Tommy Craggs, the executive editor of Gawker Media, and Max Read, the editor of Gawker.com — resigned in protest. They were succeeded by Mr. Cook and Mr. Pareene. Mr. Denton said publicly that the site would be “nicer” in the future and less tabloid in its sensibilities.
But the truly funny thing about all this was how the “progressive” outlet let go of its writers. Here’s the info, courtesy of The Awl…
From inside Gawker: “We’re finding out who got laid off by looking at the list of disabled Slack accounts. They’re doing it one by one instead of a group thing. Literally people getting DMed to come into a conf room. And then their Slack is killed.”
So, what does all this mean? To me, it looks like Gawker is moving into its death phase. I don’t see them competing as a politics site and I’m not the only one who feels that way. Jezebel could have a decent run by gutting the feminist bullshit, but then again, there are MANY other sites who do Hollywood better and who have also done it for longer. So I don’t really like their chances very much, either. Plus, we still have The Hulkster coming around the bend. A big verdict against them there could put the final nail in the coffin. One can only hope.
I also think it’s fair to give credit where credit is due. I’m talking about us, of course. I imagine most of you here support GamerGate, and without our war on Gawker, who knows what would have happened. There’s no doubt that their own missteps have hurt them more than anything, but we put them back on their heels and forced them to react. We took seven figures off their bottom line last year, and that’s a big deal for a company with a small (compared to other media powers) profit-margin. So, it’s only right that we take some of the blame for their continued downfall. In other words, give yourselves a big pat on the back. You’ve helped but a bully on their last legs and have done it with style. Congrats.
Now, it’s time to finish the job.
