hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

Yeah I noticed that- it's sicker than I imagined honestly. Like finding out that relevant ilxors are just complicit with gawker grossness but turn out to be the main drivers of that ideology. xxp

Jordan reported out a true and interesting story that stands well within the site’s long tradition of aggressively reporting on the sex and personal lives of powerful media figures, and I—and Tommy—still stand behind that story, and Jordan’s reporting, absolutely.

Still not getting it then. I agree with the principle that Max resigned over, re: the editorial/advertising firewall, and his admirable loyalty to his writers, but to do it over this crappy story is sad to me.

But then I scrolled back through this thread and every single one of Jordan's posts is doubling down in response to criticism. I guess the Gawker mentality is so entrenched that they really can't grasp why they've pissed people off (and not the evil Gamergate/Reddit/elite foes) or accept the possibility, even once, that they may have misjudged the line.

social media really engenders cliqueiness and toeing the party line among media companies, i've noticed. like not just here and over more unobjectionable things but pretty much every time a journalist gets a job at a new company *everything* they link and big up will emanate from that company

Doesn't social media do that with everybody? You get into your bunker with your team and resist all criticism. That's why Twitter arguments are usually lousy. This is the same thing but with pay checks.

Like the problem isn't that max failed to package the story correctly. The problem is that no one stopped to think that they might have a responsibility not to hurt someone unless there was a public interest in doing so. This isn't even industry standards but acting like a decent human.

― Mordy, Monday, July 20, 2015 1:00 PM (8 minutes ago)

by all accounts, there was strong internal disagreement over whether to publish

But the ppl pushing for it are the ones from our community!

lol: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/18/the-ten-most-heinously-unpleasant-gawker-writers-ranked/

let us never forget that milo is worse than everyfuckingone put together

A proud day for ILX *wipes tear from eye* (xp)

Tommy and Max are clearly the ones who swatted back anyone advising them internally not to publish this story in the first place, so it's good that they're gone and most surprising that they weren't canned before they could pompously resign.

denton's post pretty much summarizes the situation -- gawker media makes its money from adbuys targeting people who want to read twelve stories about apple products whenever they announce something or what products are on sale on "cyber monday" or details about who is cast in what movie about men flying in underpants. the existence of a site called "gawker.com" that writes all sorts of other content is basically a historical accident at this point, the only reason it still exists is to lend all the other things some legitimacy, and basically if it starts causing more trouble than its worth he's happy to throw it over the side of the ship every time.

he didn't throw the site over the side of the ship it's still on the ship

i read that beetbort url at first glance as 'the ten most heinously unpleasant gawker writers naked'

still failing to understand how geithner is a "powerful media figure" over here, but nevermind all that, because editorial independence

nice, nice

Difficult for me to see how they would lose "legitimacy" by axing the flagship site, if these are the sorts of stories its editors consider the peak of their journalistic aspirations.

petition to rename this Thread of Harrumph

Surprised to learn that kotaku and gizmodo are more profitable than gawker proper. Gawker and Jezebel always seemed like the flagships. They're definitely my favorite ones to read even though I also hate them.

Wait, where did you learn that? Is there a ranking somewhere?

...every single one of Jordan's posts is doubling down in response to criticism. I guess the Gawker mentality is so entrenched that they really can't grasp why they've pissed people off (and not the evil Gamergate/Reddit/elite foes) or accept the possibility, even once, that they may have misjudged the line.

otm

xp oh s clover implied i thought

as i've said i think the decision to publish the story was a very bad one, but i can respect the people at gawker who would resign over the taking down of the post over editorial objections. of course the "hill they choose to die on" is going to be a controversial one -- if it weren't, there would be no conflict between editorial independence and business interests. nick's post is understandable from a business perspective but if i were an editor, i'd have no faith in my independence.

I thought a site like Gawker blurred the line b/w editorial and business -- they're one and the same. Their advertising model requires a certain kind of story.

still failing to understand how geithner is a "powerful media figure" over here

CFO is roughly the second in line in the leadership of a company after CEO (Presidents can fall in the middle).

conde nast is... sort of a big media company?

you might say "but the powerful media figures are the editors," but nah. like if this whole mess shows one thing it shows that those editors serve at the pleasure of the execs.

s. clover otm. CFO of Condé Nast is a powerful position! In media!

This was not a "story" and should not have been published (tho reasonable to pursue to determine if there was a story there) but let's not pretend the CFO of an international publishing empire is "just an accountant"

Wonder what Spy would have done with this. Blind item?

Beyond the decision to publish, that story required cultivation of its source while he was planning and executing an extortion attempt. And now we know a lot about who that source was. Even if the plug had been pulled before the story had gone live, it still seems like a colossal mistake. I know lagoon thinks this is just how Woodward and Bernstein did it, I see a difference (mostly in the lack of public interest justification, but also in the lack of interest in vetting the source).

Worth a read; A. Newitz linked saying "I also think this is an excellent response to Gawker’s post, and how it assumed sex work = shame."

http://charoshane.tumblr.com/post/124353155320/about-that-gawker-post

Also just now:

https://twitter.com/jiatolentino/status/623184047712378880

Proud of Gawker for bluntly giving Nick Denton pure splenetic hell in this meeting right now, not that it'll result in a goddamn thing

re the stats i might have overstated, but here's a breakdown: https://www.quantcast.com/p-d4P3FpSypJrlA/traffic/sites?segment=&sort=global-percent-desc&country=US&contains=

so as a whole gizmodo and lifehacker slightly edge out gawker proper, but in the u.s. gawker itself still dominates.

but still... add up gizmodo, lifehacker, io9 and kotaku and you hit roughly 60% of the traffic across the network. and its going to be segments like those that have the main room for growth.

I've never felt sorry for Nick Denton in my entire life, but I wouldn't wish babysitting that room of petulant children on anyone.

and look at something like: http://gawker.com/stats/graph/uniques/monthly to see the top performing gawker authors, and look at what stories in particular they cover and the picture is pretty clear.

if i were an editor, i'd have no faith in my independence

at which media organizations can editors publish everything they want with no limitations?

i can imagine that max/craggs thought this story fit in nicely with gawker's garbage ethos and felt sandbagged, but it's a business, not a divine and selfless non-profit mission to uncover all that is hidden. there are real-world consequences -- beyond those for geithner, of course -- for publishing things that basically only sterling and rogermexico even try to defend

would love to know what exactly u think I'm defending here?

So they fired their second best-performing writer?

yeah i think roger was just saying a conde nast CFO is powerful, not that the story was defensible. that's an honor reserved exclusively for sterling

ah. sorry rog

disappointed that Casey Chan isn't on there.

[oops, was reading that wrong. It would be weird if the ranking was alphabetical.]

hugs y'all and thx kk

like i don't have history with gawker or agree with this thread's general take that all they do is bad and wrong (e.g. they have cultivated Greg Howard and Albert Burneko and Caity Weaver and any number of others whose work I value) and I respect any news org's obligation to pursue a lead and see if a story emerges but this was a non story as published and a terrible decision. the consequences and fallout are fully merited.

Tommy and Max are clearly the ones who swatted back anyone advising them internally not to publish this story in the first place, so it's good that they're gone and most surprising that they weren't canned before they could pompously resign.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, July 20, 2015 12:17 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How is this "obvious"?

Er, "clear"

If you piece together the tone and details of their resignation letters and the whispers that many people in editorial all over the Gawkerverse were against publishing the story, it seems like to me they were on some kind of blind crusade to get it out there. I mean, how is it not clear? There obviously wasn't anyone higher up pushing them to do it. They can fall on their swords all they want, but even people in the org, BEFORE it was pulled down, were telling them it was a bad move.

nick's post is understandable from a business perspective but if i were an editor, i'd have no faith in my independence.

I think a line needs to be drawn between taking down a post because it was requested by an advertiser or took too hard a look into a Gawker Media business partner or something along those lines (the Buzzfeed situation that Gawker delighted in covering) vs. the owner going "oh shit posting this is going to make everyone stop reading us, we ought to backtrack."

While the latter is interference with the editorial side for 'business reasons' I think a distinction can be drawn between the two situations. Management/ownership is within its right to interfere when editorial has possibly doomed the publication.

understood that geithner was highly placed in the corporate structure but its still a reach to say that he was relevant to the editorial direction of CN or a figure of public interest outside of the ny media landscape. i think it's disingenuous to say that gawker media's managing partners' response to this story proves anything about a similar situation at CN or justifies gawker running the story in any way. to be frank i find the editorial umbrage taken by max et al. to be a convenient deflection from the ethical issue at hand. i hate slippery slope atguments as a rule but the question remains of whose personal life is relevant to the public interest. what exactly is the standard to be applied?

yeah CFO is strictly business side even at a media company

Update, 1:48 p.m.

Jezebel editor-at-large Jessica Coen forwarded the following email she received from Nick Denton in January 2014 (when Coen was serving as editor-in-chief of Jezebel) to Gawker Media’s editorial listserv:

From: Nick Denton
Date: Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 7:37 PM
Subject: This is the opposite of our policy
To: Jessica Coen
Cc: Joel Johnson

jezebel.com/trans-woman-commits-suicide-amid-fear-of-outing-by-spor-1503902916

If the author believes this, she’s working at the wrong place. And should be guided to a more congenial work environment. We’re truth absolutists. Or rather, I am. And I choose to work with fellow spirits.

[Quote from post linked above] “Issue two is the reporting on the trans status of the subject. This is much clearer: Don’t out someone who doesn’t want to be out. The end. Everyone has a right to privacy when it comes to their gender identity or sexual orientation, and beyond this, the trans status is not relevant.”

i have no doubt nick denton is full of shit and a raging hypocrite, and i could see how that matters in this situation if anyone was actually being punished by him for the piece

As recently as six months ago, Denton was intimating that outing athletes as trans was not only okay, but a company mission, and anyone who thought otherwise should be writing someplace else. So I'm starting to see now why maybe the editorial group at Gawker feels blindsided by getting their story removed, but this doesn't make me any more sympathetic. Instead, it makes me more curious why anyone would want to fucking work there in the first place.

there's a huge difference between taking something down (which imho should never be done except under legal requirements) and leaving something up but with a big note.

in a print paper you can't unprint a story. digital pubs should abide by the same principle.

see, e.g.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/vice/2001/06/monkeyfishing.html

i understand and respect that, but that doesn't seem like the compromise editorial is asking for

pulling the thing down denied a discussion and hashing through of what should and shouldn't be printed, that's why there's a response.