According to one report, New Yorkers are just “not ready” for the iPhone, at least according to Apple’s on own tech support group, which Consumerist writer Laura Northrop called yesterday.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last night, we hit a panel at 92Y Tribeca hosted by the Consumerist and Consumer Reports that focused on online media’s contribution to consumer protection.

The panel, moderated by Consumer Reports‘ editorial director Kevin McKean, featured Consumerist co-executive editor Ben Popken, Craigslist.org founder Craig Newmark, former Huffington Post contributor Rachel Sklar (who is currently working for Abrams Research) and consumer reporter Bob Sullivan, who writes MSNBC‘s the Red Tape Chronicles column.

Throughout the discussion, Sullivan represented a traditional media point of view while Popken commented on the differences a Web site like Consumerist can make in getting companies to recognize and react to consumer complaints. Newmark advocated social media and consumers’ individual responsibilities to speak up, while Sklar, quoting Ronald Reagan, warned consumers to “Trust, but verify,” their sources of information.

“Anybody who wants to can be an authority, can be a blog publisher, can make their opinion known, can make their experiences known, can join in a movement if they wish,” Sklar said.

More after the jump

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Gawker Media is capping off 2008 by selling two of its blogs — Consumerist and the Hollywood gossip site Defamer. Yesterday, two weeks after FishbowlNY broke the story of talks between the two companies, The New York Times reported that Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, is buying the customer watchdog blog Consumerist from Gawker Media. In the article, the paper quotes Gawker publisher Nick Denton saying that he’s also “in talks” to sell the Hollywood gossip site Defamer. FishbowlNY has exclusively learned that, later in the afternoon, Denton sent out an email to his site leads revealing that Defamer has actually already been sold. Denton told his top editors that public announcement of the sale will come later today.

Denton put the Consumerist up for sale in mid-November at the same time that he folded his tech-industry gossip blog Valleywag into Gawker.com. Defamer was never put on sale, but in his email, Denton says the company was approached about the site a few months ago and has been in talks with the buyer ever since. Denton’s missive did not reveal who will be purchasing Defamer, but that news should come out when the sale is officially announced later today.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Gawker had their own black Friday newsdump today. In a move that may soon become known as the Denton doctrine, Gawker head Nick Denton announced that he was preemptively laying off 19 members of the editorial staff, including recently hired Moe Tkacik, and suspending page view bonuses for the first quarter of next year due to the upcoming fiscal crisis. Earlier this year Denton cut loose three of Gawker’s sites including Wonkette with similar explanations. We spoke to Denton earlier and he confirmed that this was indeed a preemptive move since none of the sites had yet to see any cancellations.

Denton declined to give us a rundown of who was being laid off, though Valleywag confirmed they had already cut three; judging from the memo that was posted to the site, it looks like Valleywag, Consumerist, and Fleshbot will be the hardest hit. The memo also confirmed earlier reports that Denton will be replacing himself with former NYO-er Gabriel Snyder. Why Snyder?

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.