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

At one point, writer Bill Arkin wanted to know what would happen to the rest of them. Craggs and Read didn’t have answers. “This is not helpful!” Arkin yelled, according to a source.

lol. dude, when you emerge from your hissy fit, maybe consider that the guys who just quit the company are not the best people to go to for those answers.

Hey! Divorce is hard for kids

its even one of the main headlines now

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/20/gawker-editors-quit-removed-post

they might as well be having a temper tantrum over finding out santa claus isn't real (which would be fitting since nearly the entire staff has believed in santa claus more recently than willes taking over the la times in 97).

lol

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.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, July 20, 2015 1:13 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So the answer is, you have no actual idea who was for or against what. Just checking

gawker only exists for its customers (readers) - without them it doesn't work. now if advertisers had forced the retraction of that article, that would be a different thing, but gawkers readers were in practically unanimous agreement that the story should absolutely not have been published. and since the editors didn't seem to care that their customers did not want this kind of story, denton stepped in and removed it. i understand the whole firewall thing but i also think the money guy stepping in was totally called for, and it was definitely an extreme case.

this is hardly the beginning of a 'slippery slope', since gawker has published plenty of junk over the years without consequence from upper management.

i'm totally in awe that this hasn't been a wake up call to all those involved in pushing the article forward. instead they've doubled down, which is just .... ugh.

― just1n3, Monday, July 20, 2015 4:31 PM (55 minutes ago)

this is a great point. i think denton was motivated in part by the optics wrt the ongoing hogan case, but yeah

hey deej i wonder if you saw this tweet it wasn't mentioned in any of the articles of conversations about this event https://twitter.com/max_read/status/621855300509925376

xp yeah i'm not a lawyer but i've watched a lot of law & order isn't there a thing about demonstrating a pattern of behavior?

whose lol-ling @ lawyers now, huh?!

If there was a controversy about a particular post, it's not like it's going around the company for lots of people to read and be upset by before it runs. I mean, I assume, because that would make no sense. If there was a "controversy" about what was published, then it was probably among top level editors who actually looked it over. I have no idea if max is pro or con and to what degree based on that tweet, though; it wouldn't surprise me if someone could be against publishing but once the post is made you abide by the vote and support your writer's work, no matter how misguided an article might be

For all I know craggs was opposed and outvoted, or Leah, or whoever else. I don't know, and I'm not trying to make up excuses for them! I'm just saying Johnny fever's mind reading is probably bullshit

you know deej all those things you're not sure about actually have answers in the record, if you'd been following along

gawker only exists for its customers (readers) - without them it doesn't work. now if advertisers had forced the retraction of that article, that would be a different thing, but gawkers readers were in practically unanimous agreement that the story should absolutely not have been published. and since the editors didn't seem to care that their customers did not want this kind of story, denton stepped in and removed it. i understand the whole firewall thing but i also think the money guy stepping in was totally called for, and it was definitely an extreme case.

― just1n3, Monday, July 20, 2015 4:31 PM (55 minutes ago)

consumers of a free service aren't the "customers," they are the product. the people paying money are the customers; what we have been able to glean from these statements is that advertisers were willing to walk away over this.

i don't really see the distinction between denton stepping in and the advertising people doing so

guys face it we will never understand how journalism work even when it's being dissected right in front of us

works

there's like 3 dozen right thing/wrong reason dealios (and vice versa) in this whole mess

I have been following along, although not to this thread which is almost as embarrassing as the original article

guys face it we will never understand how journalism work even when it's being dissected right in front of us

― Most Scientifically Beautiful Face (President Keyes), Monday, July 20, 2015 4:39 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Who's talking about "how journalism works"? I'm talking about people assuming they know what happened in a closed door conversation because they are confident they've figured out the Bad Guy

anyway nothing has changed really. you can debate the journalism ethics blah blah all you want those are just lamestream media rules right which rhymes w/ pools which starts w/ a p which rhymes w/ t which stands for the times sold bush lies to promote a war in iraq. maybe ppl had convinced themselves that max (or even jordan lol) were decent guys and that they did what they had to do journalism's a tough racket and the bad stuff allows the good stuff to happen or whatever and are disappointed to find out that they think the bad stuff is the good stuff and that max was just a more hygenic chuck johnson. gawker will be a better read now, jordan's not untouchable (let's remember that whatever offense in terms of journalistic 'ethics' as opposed to being a decent human being ethics occurred it probably isn't as bad as nick sylvester) and can still write about migos for pfork or whatever, max will write some david brock type 'how i lost my soul to clickbait - and how i found it' piece for the awl or n+1 or whatever garbage site and get a job somewhere better than gawker, nick denton will remain swine only now maybe his writers won't buy his bullshit so completely.

this post is haunting me:

but the whole line of argument is "this person is not a celeb, and so this is not newsworthy otherwise well fair game".

so some of my discomfort is "well, if rich executives who don't seek the public eye explicitly are not considered 'newsworthy', maybe they should be?"

like to me in some sense, the idea that people with a certain amount of money will as a matter of course fly hookers out to vegas and pay them thousand of dollars for weekend flings, that's sort of interesting and... maybe not what people think of the world?

imho it does inspire sort of a "burn babylon burn" reaction but i know that also comes with reactionary moral ideas as well. it feels like the intention is "they tell us this is wrong, but then they go do it." and you say "but is a cfo who i've never heard of one of 'them'?"

and this is where, in a sense, my answer is... yes?

― where the sterls have no name (s.clover), Sunday, July 19, 2015 5:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

max's after-the-fact defense of the post is on the main story from today: http://gawker.com/tommy-craggs-and-max-read-are-resigning-from-gawker-1719002144

it's not ambiguous that he remained fully supportive of publishing

xxpost just fyi

can't believe deej was wrong and or wrongheaded on ilx omg

he will really grasp onto whatever feeb nonsense he can there's no quality control which is really the theme of the whole story

well deej you've expressed uncertainty over 1) how many eyeballs, and whose, saw the story before it was published, 2) whether max defends publishing the story on the merits, and 3) how the vote went down. all of these things are public knowledge at this point. hence people not really taking your recent posts too seriously

unlikely i'd guess but i wonder if high profile calls to 'block gawker on yr facebook feed' played any role. losing advertising is one thing and easily recovered from but that's almost losing yr medium, far more of a chilling effect than usual ad boycott. thinking in terms of 'facebook ruined the internet' debate.

so some of my discomfort is "well, if rich executives who don't seek the public eye explicitly are not considered 'newsworthy', maybe they should be?"

like to me in some sense, the idea that people with a certain amount of money will as a matter of course fly hookers out to vegas and pay them thousand of dollars for weekend flings, that's sort of interesting and... maybe not what people think of the world?

non-famous rich dudes sometimes hire prostitutes is not a news story. I mean everyone knows expensive prostitutes exist, who exactly is hiring them other than non-famous rich guys? (and sometimes famous rich guys.)

this 'was a news story' because he was a married w/ children dude and the hooker was a man. people would have rolled their eyes and just said 'who cares about the cfo of conde nast' if the prostitute had been a woman.

max's after-the-fact defense of the post is on the main story from today: http://gawker.com/tommy-craggs-and-max-read-are-resigning-from-gawker-1719002144

it's not ambiguous that he remained fully supportive of publishing

xxpost just fyi

― chinavision!, Monday, July 20, 2015 4:47 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He doesn't address or discuss the arguments that were had prior to publishing whatsoever

well deej you've expressed uncertainty over 1) how many eyeballs, and whose, saw the story before it was published, 2) whether max defends publishing the story on the merits, and 3) how the vote went down. all of these things are public knowledge at this point. hence people not really taking your recent posts too seriously

― usic ally (k3vin k.), Monday, July 20, 2015 4:54 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is not correct.

1) quote to me where someone says who had seen the post and who was for and against and editing and packaging that piece.

2) max defending the story on its merits is not "max had no problem with the story prior to publication" (nor am I arguing he didn't: as I said, entirely possible he thought it was perfect in its 1st draft for all we know !)

3) I'm not talking about the vote to remove the piece, I'm talking about the discussion of its publication in the first place, which had been alluded to as controversial but never described in detail, and to which Johnny fever as far as I can tell decided with no basis was the result of craggs and max pushing the article through against everyone else's wishes. The only evidence of this so far I'm seeing is people saying they supported it after it was decided it would be published

i agree that the gay element is a strong part of the story's "juice". i don't know that if a woman had come to gawker with the same texts their judgment on how to proceed would have been any different.

if this had been some fuckos in florida trying to blackmail each other to get leverage over an eviction it would be a paragraph news of the weird thing, nobody would much care but nobody would be debating the ethics of outing or even pub'ing it in the first place. a giggle soon forgotten.

but then again w/o the notional relationship to "real power" it never would have made it to gawker either. i do still think this guy sits below the threshold of notability, fwiw.

then there's the funny line that criminality is public. if either the act of being a john or an extorter had ended up with the cops and not with jordan sargent, well, then jordan sargent could write about it no problem.

so, if the rules against this kind of salacious disclosure are again enforced, what world are we left with? one where people's privacy and their choice of closetedness or sex work identities are protected. but also one where rich people get to fly prostitutes out for a weekend, queers and sex workers can be evicted w/o much right of appeal (if the guy's story holds any water) and none of us civilians has any right to know anything about it. and maybe we don't.

i generally think sex work ought to be decriminalized so i don't have any leg to stand on w/r/t to the notability of the *event* in q either

Among the blizzard of wrong we even got an obligatory "this thread is embarrassing" post from deej.

I'm willing to give that dude's landlord the benefit of the doubt considering that this guy is a totally crazy conspiracy theorist

wait you know deejs landlord

yeah the most disappointing thing from this for me isn't the non-public figure aspect cuz they'd copped to that standard already and this was just another part of their weird editorial focus shift to carrying out boring vendettas against rivals, like max was benzino or he was kissing denton's ass for a job he already had. what was most disappointing was max spinning this whole 'actually gay panic hit pieces are the most noble thing a journalist can aspire to'. like if he'd defended that 'piece' w/ that rando singing along to the n-word at some show by saying 'gawker will never hesitate to expose scalawags that betray the honor of the noble white race'.

lol at deej demanding far more thorough fact checking from some dude on a message board than he does from any actual journalists

like you know max can get you work at gawker anymore right?

I have no trouble getting work thanks though u weird creep

always more revenge porn sites in sea huh

I realize everyone is straining so hard for a tone of righteous indignation in Jordan and max's absence that they're like, well, arguing with deej will have to do, but I think it's pretty reasonable to be like, stick to what you know?

There's plenty of reasonable things to blame them for here, no need to make shit up

I'm willing to give that dude's landlord the benefit of the doubt considering that this guy is a totally crazy conspiracy theorist

― iatee, Monday, July 20, 2015 5:08 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the dispute was in texas, wasn't it? a guy with some colorful ideas about how the world is governed and a few tactical firearms can't rent a place? like, what's it really about? i know i know, we'll never know, we shouldn't know, we don't even need to know what we know now etc etc

glad to hear journalism's thriving as a career field. maybe there won't be another war in iraq after all. maybe deej can be the man who makes the 50 hottest video sluts slide show that sways the vote in congress when the time comes.

ok now yr just doing weird ad hom shit

"maybe there won't be another war in iraq after all"

actually, uh, maybe?

wow, a balls-deej throwdown about who's a sell-out, i didn't know this festival was going to have one of those "classic band plays album in full" sets

My takeaway from all of this is that the people arguing up thread "you don't understand how journalism works" appear not to have understood how journalism works

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Monday, July 20, 2015 4:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

journalism prob doesnt work any one way but there are lots of way ppl think it shd work

everyone is bringing their game tonight and its as fine a show as we'd hope for

I have no trouble getting work thanks

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/I'm willing to give that dude's landlord the benefit of the doubt considering that this guy is a totally crazy conspiracy theorist

― iatee, Monday, July 20, 2015 5:08 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink/

the dispute was in texas, wasn't it? a guy with some colorful ideas about how the world is governed and a few tactical firearms can't rent a place? like, what's it really about? i know i know, we'll never know, we shouldn't know, we don't even need to know what we know now etc etc

based on what you've seen from his personal interactions, would you want this guy in your building?

no.

i'm not really arguing with you.