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

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.

they're writing generally makes them bad writers!

tbf a lot of actual papers are just using wire material so

btw politics IS pop culture in the US, and nothing but for 35 years

I normally grunt and shake my head and your political posts but I find it hard to grunt right now

lol 35 years

weeping with the thought that my parents conceived me during the Reagan candidacy

i said *nothing but*, ballsy

xp

mh disgruntled

weeping with the thought that my parents conceived me during the Reagan candidacy

― μpright mammal (mh),

where's the rest of you?

i want to start an internet tabloid called "two truths and a lie"

btw politics IS pop culture in the US, and nothing but for 35 years

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, November 17, 2015 7:53 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree w Zappa here, politics is the entertainment branch of industry

if the company could fire us all and replace us with an army of far lesser paid 22 year olds they would probably do that. they wouldn't need a threat of a strike to make that happen. in reality, gawker exists in opposition of the places that are employed by that workforce--mic.com, upworthy, etc. those places have their own audience, but gawker caters to people who want to read the news differently, even if we're pulling from the same news sources or covering the same things (in the process of aggregation). if one day nick looks at the balance sheet and decides that he would rather be more like those sites then he'll just... do that. (if we have a union then he'll have to pay out agreed upon severance and go about things in a formal nature, but as i understand it he'll still be able to employ the people he wants to employ.) but the company values what we bring to the table, which is why we were hired, and so we have a collective power as a union (and via striking) because though a number of us may be individually replaceable, the whole editorial arm of the company is not replaceable. hiring 100 people to come work for gawker in the way gawker wants itself to be is not a matter of snapping one's fingers.

at least that's how i see it :)

xp it wouldn't be two totally true articles and one totally false one, but 2/3 of the content would have some basis and 1/3 would just be made up. the catch is that our writers are so snappy and hip people can't help but read us. also, we always seem to get the early scoop on every stories. the publication would inspire thinkpieces, one of which -- at slate -- would be called "the new nihilism"

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.

The good writers are the ones making up their own content - the best restaurant in NY pieces (both gone, I believe), HamNo, etc., a few of the Jalopnik and Deadspin writers (though I couldn't name any of them beyond Drew Magary). The rest add a couple of paragraphs of weak snark to whatever video or article is being shared - that's actually lazier than Buzzfeed.

shipping the news xp

xp since we were talking about whether or not it would be feasible for nick denton to just fire all of gawker & replace with 19 year olds, i assumed it was understood when we were talking about "good" or "bad" writing that it was, like, writing that differentiates itself positively for readers in some way and is therefore "scarce" in a way generic 19 year old's blogpost isn't. not literally your subjective favourite writers. i'm sorry the person who wrote a restaurant review that you liked got fired, i don't think gawker corp is weighing whether or not you and a guy who posts on a moribund indie rock messageboard as "balls" likes his writers or not in this hypothetical financial eval

U sure get hardson for gawker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EwViQxSJJQ

xp since we were talking about whether or not it would be feasible for nick denton to just fire all of gawker & replace with 19 year olds, i assumed it was understood when we were talking about "good" or "bad" writing that it was, like, writing that differentiates itself positively for readers in some way and is therefore "scarce" in a way generic 19 year old's blogpost isn't.

perhaps most telling is that Gawker thinks that even the people who were producing original content vs reposting links (forgot Adam Weinstein) were completely replaceable or irrelevant to their business model. If writers with some clue about their fields of interest who can churn out a few thousand original words per day are cogs, what must management think of the guy who writes 1.5 paragraphs linking to an announcement that Bobby Jindal is dropping out?

i don't get the condescension towards aggregation, either. the internet is all about aggregation. do y'all fancy yourselves as like, some lone raw dog internet explorers, out there surfing the big bad world wide web alone? "nah man, i don't fuck with content aggregators. i go for the straight dope myself." *refreshes imgur front page for the 1000th time today* do you actually want to read reddit? isn't it good that someone holds their noses, goes in there, finds some funny stuff to show you, and writes a sarcastic paragraph below it?

aggregation is fine, it's just a little weird that what's essentially a cool-kids-club Reader's Digest has become this huge widely-read thing. yr right though the attitude toward aggregation is really hostile, I always attribute my own "eh, who cares" attitude about it to being old tho. feel like if I were 20 I'd wanna be digging shit up myself, not having people frame it for me

I don't have a problem with aggregation (seems pretty obvious that I visit Jalopnik and Deadspin daily if nothing else) but I'm not going to pretend that the ability to copy and past a link comprises a unique and valuable skill set.

JCLC yr tumblr is like my fav content aggregator, u aggregate good content like swords, websites, pictures of rad dudes, pictures of rad demons

xp-

then why do you go to jalopnik or deadspin and not somewhere else to get your aggregated cars and uh, (deadspin is sports right?) content? do you even read the text that accompanies the link if they are so poorly written in your opinion?

or i mean, going with what jordan said, why not read upworthy instead of gawker, if all both sites do is paste links?

I don't have a problem with aggregation (seems pretty obvious that I visit Jalopnik and Deadspin daily if nothing else) but I'm not going to pretend that the ability to copy and past a link comprises a unique and valuable skill set.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Tuesday, November 17, 2015 9:07 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

this isn't a job that exists. people who do this are replaced by people who are better. even people whose jobs are to purely aggregate usually have some sort of skill that may be unseen to the reader -- clean copy, work ethic, ability to churn out posts quickly, ability to show up to work on time etc

no site you read wants to aggregate. if websites could exist without aggregation than they would. but they can't. so they aggregate.

aggregation is fine, it's just a little weird that what's essentially a cool-kids-club Reader's Digest has become this huge widely-read thing.

― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, November 17, 2015 8:58 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this isn't wrong. from an old New Yorker profile of Gawker

What [Gawker] is selling, essentially, is a pose of knowing, cool detachment. Very little of what Denton publishes qualifies as gossip in the traditional sense. It’s a sensibility.

the ability to write well in a knowing, cool detached voice is (apparently, otherwise gawker writers would be paid min wage) scarce

there is a middle ground between 'anyone could do that job' and 'only a highly select group of people could do that job'. most middle class people in 2015 have jobs in that middle ground I think.

I don't think online writers at companies that have a 50% chance of not existing in 10 years are great fits for unions regardless.

was anyone from deadspin fired? it is kinda funny who gets poached. like caity weaver? totally get it, super funny. who knows what her shelf life is but whatever. drew magary? definitely has an audience, and if you can't afford bill simmons (and you almost definitely can't) this'll do. but hudson hongro? i was amazed to find out the dodo (ugh) bothered to poach him. like what's the point? nobody there could figure out just go to youtube and search "cute" and "bear" or "funny" and "bear"?

also i don't need an aggregator, i have my facebook friends