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Oh, hey new Gawker: In case anyone needed a reason to go to Gawker today, here you go. Compared to previous iterations of the redesign, the kickers in front of the topics help a lot. They weren’t there before, making everything sort of blend into one another. Still, though, we think this is a huge mistake on Gawker’s part. By downplaying what made Gawker worthwhile (the snarky blurbs over to the right), they endanger their base. Good luck, though. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Gawker is a site that’s easy to hate, we know this. We’re sure that plenty of people were taking lots of joy in Nick Denton’s misery today. But the thing that bothers us about that stance is that, as harsh as Gawker and Denton come across sometimes, they prove they’re worth their weight in salt every time they get a scoop. When it comes to the Web, nobody tops them, honestly.

why they’re uniqueThey’re not afraid of taking on the tawdry story because it’s tawdry. They’re not afraid of paying a source because it requires paying a source. They’re not against digging into rumors just because they’re rumors. And they know just when to play each of those hands.
Why they matterAs much as we’d like to hate Gawker and its sister sites for being the most arrogant content network on the entire internet, every time we want to hate them, they do something really freaking cool. They make reading the news online worthwhile, ’cause they get it.
They hate you? So what? Gawker talks crap about 4chan or Anonymous or whomever? So what. They talk crap about everybody. And they deserve to get away with it. Because unlike the gossip sources of yore (think National Enquirer), they actually have substance. source

» Oh yeah: One thing we cannot and will not get behind is making a million and a half commenters pawns in this silly game. Gawker may deserve it (to some degree), but the readers aren’t worth getting crapped on. We feel bad for them more than anyone else in this endeavor.

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Let’s get it on the record: We were really uncomfortable with posting anything about Gawker’s Christine O’Donnell get yesterday. For lots of reasons. First, she’s going to lose next week almost assuredly, and it’s just kicking her while she’s down. Second, the anonymous dude who wrote it is a vile human being. Third, he wrote some nasty things about her. Fourth, and this is the most important one, we don’t want to give Gawker the traffic for this story. This is so loaded with classlessness all around that it’s entirely possible that people might vote for her on Tuesday out of remorse. She’s had a rough few weeks, and she might get some votes out of this. For the love of God, Gawker. This woman is allowed to be a human being. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

As with any other highly coveted consumer product, especially from Apple, the demand for the iPhone isn’t entirely rational. The improvement are incremental, like a faster processor, sharper screen and a very limited video chat capability.
ValleyWag blogger Ryan Tate • Downplaying the good things about the iPhone 4 in an attempt to broadly criticize Apple. (This from a guy who got into a pretty stupid war of words with Steve Jobs a few weeks back.) Dudes getting paychecks from Nick Denton’s company have been writing Apple hit pieces like this for weeks. (Going so far, in one case of one article’s headline, to blame Apple for problem that was clearly AT&T’s fault.) While Apple’s new iPhone deserves some of the criticism it’s getting (this is valid, for example), there’s no need to show us 40 videos of iPhone 4 users having the same problem. All you’re doing is trying to get back at a company you pissed off by leaking information about one of their products a couple of months early. They’re just hit pieces designed to cut down Apple, based less on actual reasons and more on vendettas. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Right now, we have nothing to lose. The thing is, Apple PR has been cold to us lately. It affected my ability to do my job right at iPad launch. So we had to go outside and find our stories like this one, aggressively.
Gizmodo Editorial Director Brian Lam • In a written response to Steve Jobs after Jobs called. Lam wanted Apple to give him a written note saying the phone was real. Jobs declined, and the rest is history. This is bad for Gizmodo (and Brian Hogan) because the letter makes it clear that they put personal interests above doing the right thing. It sounds like extortion, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be crazy if this was enough to take Gizmodo, a major site, down? This makes it seem entirely possible. (A good summary of the legal documents is here.) source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Rather than sell Defamer, Nick Denton is keeping it around – as a section of Gawker. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Feb 2011 11:22