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

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

flopson, balls (unfortunate conjunction of usernames there) said "or demand something denton doesn't feel like giving them anyway" which covers the leverage angle. the right to strike and collective bargaining are the cornerstones of union ontology iirc

Natasha Vargas-Cooper (3,572)
I wasn't given the courtesy call from my editor.

from the comments on the awl piece.

meanwhile lol@ Denton's description of Jezebel:

Each is a cultural leader: Gawker for news and politics; Gizmodo for technology; Lifehacker for productivity; Jezebel for the empowered modern woman; Deadspin for sports and men’s lifestyle; Kotaku for video games; and Jalopnik for car culture. And each of these sites is known for a devoted and influential following.

from: http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2015/11/8583240/gawker-cuts-seven-staffers-it-goes-all-politics

In my country its illegal to fire people for unionising. Is that not the case in the US?

Was that weird guy who only films himself playing Mario levels laid off???

What about Emily Gould or Gina Trapani? Surely they are safe.

would he need to fire them? he refuses to meet their demands, they go on strike, he finds some other 19 year olds to find stuff on reddit. easy peasy george and weezy.

the right to strike means the right not to be replaced if you strike.

even by an algorithm?

is there anything preventing him from moving gawker media's address to a right to work state? besides vanity i guess? couldn't he just rent a po box or empty office in pick yr state and continue to hire 'writers' in nyc as independent contractors or freelancers?

Fuckin scab algorithms

you think that's not an easily replaced skill?

― balls, Tuesday, November 17, 2015 5:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean, putting your personal distaste for the site aside, the population at large is not endowed with the ability to write funny snarky blog posts. there may be a lot of 19 year old bloggers out there, but how many of them are tolerably funny? you see a lot of names on gawker during the weekends, some idiot writes some garbage piece and the tone is all off, then you never see that name again. and then people like caity get jobs at GQ. even someone like neetzan was good at picking which reddit threads to make into articles, made the site a bunch of money, got poached. the market for writers (particularly in the early days of internet media) is a really weird labor market and i'm curious to see what these unions actually want to do

(lol @ flopson balls)

would gawker writers be striking in response to this if they were unionized yet?

Did the people who got fired receive an email inviting them to be gawker's ex-bitches?

i mean, putting your personal distaste for the site aside, the population at large is not endowed with the ability to write funny snarky blog posts. there may be a lot of 19 year old bloggers out there, but how many of them are tolerably funny?

I mean, you need a few good staffers (HamNo, Pareene, etc.) for longer form posts but a majority of the site's content is just reposting news items or hot Reddit threads or recapping something another site covered.
There's probably not an ILX regular who couldn't pull that off.

disagree

you seem confused by the fact that they don't make up their own content, that they're not like actual irl journalists out there finding stories. but that doesn't make them bad writers.