Gawker continues bashing its very premise
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Returning from a weeklong vacation, Gawker editor Choire Sicha spent his Monday continuing the blogging enterprise’s tirade against it’s own cause: blogging for cash.
Gawker, owned by Moreover founder Nick Denton and edited by Sicha (who holds the title “editorial director” for all Gawker properties, which include Defamer, Wonkette, Fleshbot and Gizmodo), is actively pushing the idea that there is no money to be made in blogging. Denton doesn’t want the words “money” and “blogging” to be in the same sentence. And why should he? Right now, he holds a near monopoloy on commercial society Web magazines.
The recent history of self-deprecation began with an article in Business 2.0, “What Makes Nick Tick?,” written by Greg Lindsay, about Denton’s sites and the revenue they are pulling in. Denton, wary to bring a media blitz upon his industry, proved reluctant to be interviewed for the article, but finally conceded when it was on his own terms.
He followed up with his own version of events, detailed on his website. Denton refuted Lindsay’s claim that Gawker Media pulled in $250,000 each year and was on its way to grossing $1 million annually. Nonsense, claims Denton. In fact, he says, there is little to no money to be had in his space.
Today, Sicha perpetuates the company’s unwritten motif, which dictates attention must be kept away from the blogosphere – a realm where there’s virtually no financial entry barrier and the success of a blog is determined by industry buzz and gossip.
In a post about a New Yorker article detailing the work of blogger representative Kate Lee – a 27-year-old assistant at International Creative Management and who is behind the book deals for former Gawker editrix Elizabeth Spiers, as well as The Black Table and Low Culture – Sicha takes a crap over the idea of bloggers turning into authors of best-sellers.
Next up in Gawker Media’s institutional claims against profitable blogging: Defamer posts about Harvey Weinstein’s failed blogging option, while Wonkette says the $800 paid to the semi-anonymous Washingtonienne blogger is the most money ever earned by a blogger.
And on an unrelated note, the New Yorker piece is written by Daniel Radosh of Radar magazine, a publication also included in one of today’s mentioned blind items.
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