The Hollywood Reporter has added some editing fire power to its website. Per an announcement this morning, Seth Abramovitch has been appointed deputy editor, while Erin Carlson and Jordan Zakarin have joined the publication as staff editors.

Abramovitch once worked alongside Mark Lisanti as an editor of defamer.com. He also helped relaunch movieline.com and has contributed to gawker.com. Carlson comes over to THR.com from AP, where she covered TV, while Zakarin was previously an entertainment editor and reporter with The Huffington Post.

“I’m very happy to welcome Seth, Erin and Jordan,” said editorial director Janice Min. “Their talents and diverse backgrounds in online journalism will be an asset as THR.com continues to expand.”

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It’s clear that using the word “nigga” in a post didn’t exactly help Seth Abramovitch‘s career at Gawker. But A.J. Daulerio, the site’s new editor, felt the need to write his own blog post explaining that was not what got Abramovitch fired. Or not the only thing. From Gawker:

To mitigate some of the damage done to his professional reputation as a result of my ill-timed public dismissal of him, I’d like to reiterate here that there were other factors before and after this DONDA mess which led to it. I thought it was a shitty joke and some of the attempts to defuse the backlash were shittier, but that shouldn’t in any way tarnish his excellent body of work, which I’ve always admired.

That’s nice of Daulerio to say, but we have to wonder – Was it his conscience, or fear of a lawsuit, that prompted this post? Abramovitch’s firing was handled poorly and publicly, with Daulerio even going so far as to make disparaging remarks about the departing blogger to the press.

In a post about Kanye West‘s new company DONDA, Seth Abramovitch joked that the name was an acronym for “Dis Original Nigga Dresses Aight.” Writing those words got Abramovitch fired from Gawker.

Granted, with a name like Seth Abramovitch, you really shouldn’t be throwing around the n-word, even as a joke. Even if that joke is about something a rapper might say, one who uses the n-word regularly. That being said, is this really a firing offense? From a website that once posted a graphic photo of a murder victim for the world and his grieving family to see? The blogger who posted that photo still works for Gawker, by the way, making this seem like a pretty arbitrary application of ethical standards.

But it could also signal a shift at Gawker. Abramovitch appears to have been canned by the site’s new editor, A.J. Daulerio, who may be intent on bringing higher moral standards to the website. Or he may just be playing into political correctness. Time will tell.