Spinning a Blog Sale

As you may have heard, Gawker Media head Nick Denton sold some blogs today. For real this time.

FishbowlNY has been all over the news, speaking with Gawker Media managing editor Noah Robischon, who could not confirm the fate of freelancers at Gridskipper, Wonkette, and Idolator.

On a related note, we’ve always known Silicon Alley Insider’s Peter Kafka to have a high “bullshit censor.” He analyzed the different spin tactics:

You can interpret this two ways. Either Denton is dumping three weak sites to concentrate on his strong ones, or he’s worried about the online ad market in the face of a looming recession. Denton is happy to provide both spins.

The “look out!” take: “I’m not so sure that an advertising recession will spare the Internet,” he says. “And, if there’s a chill coming, I’d rather be stocking up on firewood.”

And the “things are going great!” take: Denton says that his 15 sites generated 227 million pageviews in March, up 96% y/y; uniques are 29.7 million, up from 22 million six months ago.

Look at that, instead of dishing the snark, Denton is receiving it!

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