Nick Denton - FishbowlLA

Ken Layne Recalls the Enterprise Known as LAExaminer.com

Richard Horgan — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:55:23 +0000

Despite the Church of Scientology across the street, the pit bulls next door and a car that didn’t really work, Ken Layne insists his original home office set-up for LA’s defunct LAExaminer.com was “very pleasant.” That description also applies to his overall reminiscences for The Awl.

Layne says he was prompted to start the site and quickly rope in neighborhood pal Matt Welch by his daily dose of Romenesko. Later on, Richard Riordan would almost turn the blog into a weekly print publication, which would have been super cool:

The style was just the way we talked around endless pitchers at Ye Rustic Inn up the street on Hillhurst, full of moral certainty and outrage and cheap jokes — it’s what is widely practiced and critically dismissed as “snark” today, although we never had any interest in celebrities. The dreary mayor James Hahn and the pompous columnists at the terrible Los Angeles Times were regular topics, as was boosterism about the Lakers, public transportation and the eastside neighborhoods in general. We were reflexively opposed to the bland wealthy valet parking lot of the Westside.

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Finke-Easton Ellis Feud Gets a Whole Lot Uglier

Richard Horgan — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:30:06 +0000

Reclusive blogger Nikki Finke appears to be foolishly going after someone who has no fear of her.

In the latest bit of news connected to the public feud that erupted last Friday between Finke and author Bret Easton Ellis thanks to an article on Gawker and quick echo at the New York Observer end, the Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the author’s agency ICM has engaged lawyers Howard Weitzman and Lawrence Iser to counter her threats:

The lawyers have fired off two separate letters to her website’s owner demanding that she stop harassing agency employees…

Sources who have seen the cease-and-desist letters say the letters also claim that Finke has told top ICM employees she would reveal their home addresses and where their children go to school. Finke also is alleged in the letters to have told at least one agent that she would write things damaging to the agency on the Deadline blog that the agency’s executives believe to be false.

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A Strange Hollywood Blog Story Grows Stranger

Richard Horgan — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:15:17 +0000

Over the weekend, New York Post reporter Maureen Callahan shared a fairly sizable Hollywood scoop: an interview with “Enty,” the pseudonymous operator of showbiz gossip blog Crazy Days and Nights (CDaN). In recent weeks, the site has received a lot of coverage because of the Robert Downey Jr. identity-claims made by commenter “Himmmm.”

Callahan’s article was published April 1, leading a number of observers to speculate that the piece is a joke. More precisely, that the interview did properly occur but was a vehicle for misinformation. Sure enough, after vetting the details given to her by this alleged 43-year-old wills and probate attorney, Callahan came to the following conclusion:

Nearly everything Enty says doesn’t check out… It all indicates that Hollywood and the media have been punked – duped by a soft-spoken probate lawyer with delusions of grandeur. And he’s only getting bolder, accusing aging and dead stars of a rape, murder, pedophilia.

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Slandered Schwarzenegger Flight Attendant Goes After Gawker

Richard Horgan — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:30:23 +0000

When LA Times media critic James Rainey called out Gawker this spring for completely bungling a report about Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s love child, the first reader comment suggested that flight attendant Tammy Tousignant, wrongly tagged by reporter John Cook (pictured) as the mother of the ex-Governor’s love child, should sue the Nick Denton publication. That has now, belatedly, happened.

Tousignant wants a minimum of $10 million from Gawker, the National Enquirer, and UK’s The Daily Mail. In her Orange County Superior Court complaint, she is basically alleging that the extensive correction posted on Gawker in place of the erroneous May 17 item was not nearly enough. Per Rainey’s original report:

I asked Gawker editor-in-chief Remy Stern how the error came about. Stern said the reporter is one of “the very best.” He called the Schwarzenegger story an anomaly.

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Page One and David Carr at the LA Film Fest

Matthew Fleischer — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:53:28 +0000

Andrew Rossi‘s Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times made its LA Film Festival debut last night and did not disappoint. The film really should have been called “A Year At the Media Section of the New York Times,” but we digress. It was great. The collapse of the newspaper business model, online competition from aggregators like Newser and click hunters like Nick Denton‘s Gawker network, and the challenges of no longer being informational gatekeepers are all discussed at length. No real surprises for anyone who works in the journalism world, but a nice primer for those outside the business.

Journos are bound to have their favorite moments in the film. Two immediately come to mind: Carr tearing the editors of Vice a new asshole during a salty (to put it mildly) interview, and media editor Bruce Headlam somehow managing to give an interview to Rossi, make last minute edits to a huge front-page WikiLeaks story and answer his phone all at the same time. Headlum’s not the star of the film, but there can’t be a journalist in America who saw that guy in action and wouldn’t kill to have him as an editor.
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Redesign Costs Gawker Media a Whole Bunch of Readers

Pandora Young — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 06:15:23 +0000

Gawker Media’s web traffic is down about 25% since the blog network launched a major redesign. Gawker founder Nick Denton revealed the significant dip in eyeballs yesterday during a Q&A session with Felix Salmon at the paidContent conference. But Denton added, “I’m pretty confident we’re gonna be coming back.”

While Denton is famously mum on exactly how much money Gawker is raking in, he did talk about overall financial projections. From Yahoo! News:

“We set the targets flat on last year so the sales people wouldn’t be demoralized by the inevitable disruption,” he said. “We knew this was going to be traumatic.” Nevertheless, he notes that “our overlying business is pretty strong.”

We’re still reading Jezebel. But we miss the traditional blog layout.

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Gawker Network Hacked–Nick Denton’s Passwords Posted Online

Matthew Fleischer — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:06:44 +0000

Gawker just got hacked bigtime. A group calling itself Gnosis claimed credit for the attack, after posting the usernames and passwords of all accounts within the Gawker network online.

Gawker founder Nick Denton got it especially bad.

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Gawker Tops HuffPo Traffic, Pleasing Chairman Denton

Matthew Fleischer — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 09:43:51 +0000

Thanks to a couple of huge stories this month, the Gawker blog network beat the Huffington Post’s web traffic numbers for the first time ever. Gawker founder Nick Denton was pleased. Very pleased. Romenesko got a hold of Denton’s memo to staff, bragging about his HUGE…traffic. (You got that Tribune Co. executives? Web hits are one of the few things you’re allowed to brag about being large.)

From: Nick Denton
Subject: We overtook Huffpo (temporarily)
To: edit@gawker.com
Date: Thursday, October 14, 2010, 11:14 AM

Well, the fuck thesis and the Favre scandal broke through. Even the ESPN commentators were forced to give Deadspin recognition during Monday night football.

The sites as a whole have brought in 9.1m people in the US in the last seven days. That’s higher even than during iPhone week earlier this year. To give you an idea, here’s how we currently rank against competitors also measured by Quantcast…

9.1m Gawker Media
8.7m Huffington Post
4.8m Drudge
4.2m TMZ
2.7m Time

Huffpo will probably take back the lead once the current stories fade. But hopefully we’ll have a new lot by then!

Nice

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Gawker Media Revenues/Pageviews Up, Bitter/Sweet

Tina Dupuy — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:00:34 +0000

Felix Salmon at Reuters reports:

Nick Denton says that Gawker Media’s revenues were 45% higher in the first two quarters of 2009 than they were in the same period last year; he also tells me that pageviews are up 40% June-on-June. Judging by his chart, profits (revenues less expenses) hit an all-time high this quarter, which explains why he’s started hiring again. (He passed, however, on hiring Bonnie Fuller.)

Since they slashed jobs and blogs and folded Defamer into the main site, these numbers seem…generous. But they’re hiring. So there’s good…news.

Previously on FBLA:

Gawker Media Lays Off/Hires People

Layoffs at Gawker, Gizmodo and Jezebel

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Defamer About to Be Defunct

Tina Dupuy — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:44:29 +0000

Peter Kafka off AllThingsD’s Media Memo brings us this scoop:

Here’s what should be the last step in Nick Denton‘s slimdown of his Gawker Media empire: The blog network is taking its LA-based Defamer site and rolling it up under its central Gawker title. The site’s existing writers will leave, to be replaced by other Gawker writers and a new hire.

Is this the Fourth Horseman?

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Sharon Waxman Skewers Nick Denton, Internet

Greg — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:05:55 +0000

Sharon Waxman takes aim at Snarker-in-chief Nick Denton (which we get) as well as the flight of talented journalists to the Internet (which we don’t get).

As she says:

“And while I’m at it, let me publicly lament the flight of
talented colleagues, Jeff Leeds of the Times and Gabriel Snyder, once of Variety, to the world of celebrity infotainment, and the kingdom of snark, respectively. Leeds, one of the best music journalists working (or, rather, not working) has gone to Buzznet, where he will be the editor-in-chief. Snyder becomes managing editor at Gawker. Like other journalists, they have to eat, so one can hardly blame them. But their joining the world of lowest-common-denominator-clicks makes those of us seekers in the world of information-that-matters the poorer.”

Is it really impossible to think that journalists like Leeds and Snyder could elevate the level of journalism at these sites? Whose snarky now?

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Nick Denton: ‘I Felt I’d Done My Job’

Greg — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:32:10 +0000

Our sister site, Agency Spy has an interview today with Gawker‘s Nick Denton about the recent layoffs, hires and rehires. One of the most interesting aspects of the Gawker changes has been Denton finding a replacement for himself as managing editor.

As Agency Spy has it:

Matt: On your managing editor replacement, Gabriel Snyder; Why have you chosen to replace yourself? Gabriel has an independent attitude/style. How involved to you plan to be in editorial?

Denton: I felt I’d done my job. Monthly pageviews on Gawker.com have gone from 8m in December to 24m last month. And I’d announced after Labor Day that I was finally looking for a replacement. My tenure was supposed to be much shorter! And I have just a few other responsibilities.

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Gawker Media Lays Off/Hires People

Tina Dupuy — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:04:30 +0000

Nick Denton‘s Gawker Media is laying off 19 people and suspending the page view bonus model. Good news is he’s also hiring 10 people. The only one named is LA’s Gabriel Snyder to be the managing editor.

As we say, it’s an ‘adjustment‘.

The full memo – the one not on Gawker of course – is here.

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Gawker’s Hiring. Want to be the Next Nick Denton?

Greg — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:23:01 +0000

‘Cuz, apparently, not even Nick Denton wants to be Nick Denton.

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FBNY Dishes About All Things Gawker

Greg — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:35:41 +0000

Our sister blog, Fishbowl NY, wakes up a lot earlier than us. It also works harder than we do, smiles less often and wears more black. But that’s beside the point.

FBNY has all the scoop about the Gawker sales, including this quote from Nick Denton “To be blunt: they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did.”

Check it out here.

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