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

the world definitely needs more institutions making donald trump jokes

so basically wonkette 2?

Natasha Vargas-Cooper will be leaving the site as well

so jezebel goes from being a site primarily about women's issues and politics with occasional fluff bits on fashion to being an aggregator for "celebrity and pop culture coverage" with "a new health, beauty, and self-care subsite"; am i reading that correctly?

The "500 Days Of Kristin" stories will continue, though, right? Right?

so jezebel goes from being a site primarily about women's issues and politics with occasional fluff bits on fashion to being an aggregator for "celebrity and pop culture coverage" with "a new health, beauty, and self-care subsite"; am i reading that correctly?

― i made a scope for my laser musket out of some (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, November 17, 2015 3:24 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think jezebel always tended to have a lot more fluff than one might think. but stiiiiil.....

urgh jeez(ebel)

(not a regular reader so maybe I just was mostly not linked through to the fluff, which is not to say that everything there was brilliant, but, urgh)

cutting Jason Parham also seems dumb -- dude has a super strong voice and seemed on the verge of evolving into a really masthead name.

Hogan trial is in March, yes? wondering how these decisions play to that defense.

glad for a.p.

the vane was awesome to dip my toe into as a a weird place where obsessives got paid to be obsessive. but yeah kitchenette was just the behind closed ovens feature (which i hope they can keep) and sporadic filler inbetween. so conceptually that seems fine.

and it seems hard to mourn the experiment of juicing traffic with yet another recap-service-journalism spot on the internet, no matter the writing quality.

i read the jezebel thing as: 'jezebel will continue to exist, will be the only site left with celeb & pop culture in its purview' and not 'jezebel will now cover pop culture but not feminism', if that were the case why wouldn't they close jez & keep defamer?

No one is actually surprised that a Pareene-run Gawker would refocus on politics over media gossip, right? This seems like a very obvious direction for them to take to me.

sort of intrigued as to what the gawker union does if you can be called into a meeting to be told youre shit-canned.

how do unionized firms tell people they're shit-canned?

well in my unionized job being laid-off would be a process with advanced notice etc.

idg why they can't do both, why do you need to put all your eggs in one basket and 'focus on politics'? for a site that wants to be a media giant and cares so much about pageviews, why would you narrow your potential audience like that? a lot of the internet will never care about pareene style articles.

If the Gawker union chapter is anything like the other union chapters I'm familiar with, they can negotiate some amount of severance for the laid-off employees and also they have some input into the selection of which employees get let go; they can't wholesale block layoffs, particularly layoffs mandated by a change in business direction. (They can also guarantee qualified employees hit by the layoff first right of refusal for new jobs that match their skill sets, plus depending on how well they bargained they could negotiate offers of re-employment if the company's business picks up to where new jobs that match laid-off employees are being created again, but given how new they are I don't know if they got that deep into their bargaining.)

like, politics stuff will get some hits, hulk hogan type crap will get some hits, jezebel will get some hits. these writers can't be that that expensive in the big picture. you're not gonna turn into a massive media giant by being the daily show online.

xp

guys

https://twitter.com/mccarthyryanj/status/666716456839725056

there's that, too

the union contract hasn't been fully negotiated (and thus signed) so we're not actually in a union technically

right yes xp

for a site that wants to be a media giant and cares so much about pageviews, why would you narrow your potential audience like that?

opinionated politics posts get shared on FB more than almost any other kind of post

kind of surprised at the abrupt transition to ALL POLITIX NO MORE POP CULTURE, i mean rly? none? not one bit?

how boring is this thing going to be now!

omg guys what if main Gawker takes the excruciating clickbait-style tone of Sploid for everything now

Watch Angela Merkel's Perfect Response To etc etc

They... already do that?

reading a blog like sploid is so beautiful

i've always cursed gawker & jez for getting me to read/care about celeb stuff i would otherwise not even be aware of

hm yes I guess Gawker does it too but at least it's from a place of wit and snark intead of like wide-eyed "wow, so cool!" earnestness.

ppl who earnestly like cool and nifty things are just like ugh the WORST

can i just say...... thread delivers?

this is a good thread mainly because it is dead cert for periodic resurrection and i look forward to those times

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 21 February 2015 19:09 (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

more innocent days in february 2015

ALL POLITIX NO MORE POP CULTURE, i mean rly? none? not one bit? how boring is this thing going to be now!

Not as boring as... pop culture?

it will give you more time to watch Bob Hope movies

imo the best Gawker material is the wacky zany stuff of Caity Weaver (RIP) and Kelly Conaboy (RIP) and also the thoughtful gay stuff by Rich Juz (plz don't leave us)

It's funny that Gawker is gonna try to become Talking Points Memo, when Talking Points Memo has spent the last year or two trying to be Gawker (the change in their headlines and general focus has been really cringe-inducing to watch).

plus side: more scocca

weaver had basically stopped actually writing for gawker her last few months there anyway. she went to gq i think.

the union things seems curious to me. like the moment they strike or demand something denton doesn't feel like giving them anyway can't he just fire everyone and find some other 19 yr olds to find stuff on reddit? like the strength of unions isn't just in being organized but also that the workers have some not easily replaced skill right?

the moment they strike or demand something denton doesn't feel like giving them anyway can't he just fire everyone

no, that's the point of a union!

and union workers do not necessarily "have some not easily replaced skill". Part of the beauty of being unionized is being paid a decent wage for a fairly low-skilled job (in my experience!).

like i make $8 more an hour canadian doing a unionized office clerk job than i did in a similar job for a temping agency

so what would prevent him from just hiring scabs and hoping that somehow his audience doesn't exit en mass when they realize that the link to some old panda video has a different byline than the one they're used to?

like the strength of unions isn't just in being organized but also that the workers have some not easily replaced skill right?

― balls, Tuesday, November 17, 2015 4:47 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i thought the pt of unions was for workers to have some leverage in wage bargaining & other disputes, not removing the ability to fire people

having a not easily replaced skill (as gawker writers do) would make you less dependent on a union not more

In many ways, we let 1,000 flowers bloom

http://i.imgur.com/onBczQ5.jpg

i should rephrase that, change 'not easily replaced skill' w/ 'skill'. auto workers, teachers, service industry workers, athletes, steelworkers, whatever. the internet is a nearly bottomless well of ppl already doing what gawker writers for free (for vanity or to fight off boredom). like 80% of gawker is someone basically plagiarizing that well. you think that's not an easily replaced skill?

americans not knowing how unions actually work shocker

also did Morbs just tell himself he'd have more time for Bob hope movies?

yeah i live in the south and am under 80 so unions are theoretical to me. can you not just hire scabs in non-right to work states?

scabja