Gawker by day, blog network by…day. That was Curbed Network founder and president Lockhart Steele‘s schedule for at least a few years.

While spending his days as managing editor at Gawker, Steele got his own network up and running. “Everyone wastes time on the job in different ways; I guess my way of wasting time was blogging, for another blog,” he said.

His company includes the well-known blogs Curbed, Eater, Racked, and Gridskipper, along with local and national versions.

So what does Steele recall about working for Gawker Media founder Nick Denton? “Nick has a certain public persona, where people sort of see him as this dark overlord. In fact he’s an incredibly creative guy, who tends to see Web trends coming faster than most people…For all of his public posturing or public imaging as the sort of gooney man of the blog world, he’s obviously the reason we’re all here in a lot of ways.”

And what does he think about the site in its present day form? “Gawker’s purview now is a little bit wider.”

Watch the first installment of our interview to get more of Lockhart’s take on Gawker and learn how he built up Curbed Network from a “hobby” to a full-fledged business.

Part 2: Curbed Network Founder Lockhart Steele: ‘We Look For Niches Where We Can Be A Little Bit Weird’
Part 3: Lockhart Steele: ‘I Don’t Know Anyone in the New Media Space…That Has an iPad Strategy’

Media Beat is mediabistro.com’s interview series with the movers and shakers of the media world. View all past episodes at MediaBeat.com.