Thord D. Hedengren

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Tag: Gawker Media

  • Nick Denton's 2015 memo

    Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton has published a mammoth memo for 2015, where he announces changes in leadership and other important stuff for people working on any of the company’s properties, or with an interest in media. But as always when Denton writes, there’s more, and this stood out.

    We all understand how this works. Editorial traffic was lifted but often by viral stories that we would rather mock. We – the freest journalists on the planet – were slaves to the Facebook algorithm. The story of the year – the one story where we were truly at the epicenter – was one that caused dangerous internal dissension. We were nowhere on the Edward Snowden affair. We wrote nothing particularly memorable about NSA surveillance. Gadgets felt unexciting. Celebrity gossip was emptier than usual.

    We pushed for conversations in Kinja, but forgot that every good conversation begins with a story. Getting the stories should have come first, because without them we have nothing to talk about.

    (more…)

  • #GamerGate tries to bring Gawker Media out of business

    I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before: GamerGaters going after publications, Gawker Media in particular. From a Vox piece:

    How will Operation Baby Seal manage this trick? It’s not particularly clear (and, I should say here, the operation seems unlikely to succeed for sheer logistical reasons), but it mostly involves having aggrieved gamers send bunches and bunches of complaint emails about Gawker Media sites violating Google and Amazon’s terms of service. (Yes, the #GamerGate folks read the terms of service.) The examples are to be drawn from this wiki, which collects a bunch for easy collation into form letters.

    KotakuInAction began as a way to mock Kotaku, Gawker Media’s video game publication, for its aspirations toward discussion political aspects of video games, so the grudge between #GamerGate and the company runs deep. But Operation Baby Seal is truly a new level of loathing. The movement seems less to want to expose ethical lapses at this point and more to drive sites it doesn’t agree with from the face of the Earth.

    So I guess Vox is up next? These tactics hit on the publications themselves, but as long as they’re complying with their ad terms, they should be just fine. And if they’re not, if Amazon or Google kicks them out because there’s validity to the claims of the GamerGaters, then what’s the problem? This stunt might even bring something good with it, despite the intentions.

  • Gawker Media updates the hated new design

    Less boxy and a bit cleaner but still not all that appealing is my verdict. Gizmodo is the only Gawker site with details on the new design as I’m writing this, but the whole network got the update at the same time.

  • The Qawker theme for WordPress

    Are you in love with the new Gawker Media network redesign, present on sites like Gawker and Gizmodo? Well, now you can rip off that look for your WordPress site, just a theme install away.

    Nice work by Sahas Katta, although more as a demo rather than an theme people should actually use in my opinion. If nothing else but for the post links and all that.

    Incidentally, the jury (which is me) is still out on the Gawker redesign. I’ve written three posts, and scrapped them all. Hard one to wrap my head around, it’s either brilliant or an epic misfire by Denton & Co.

  • Intressant Gnosis-intervju

    Intressant intervju med Gnosis, som hackade Gawker Medias bloggar – speciellt med Wikileaks-hackeriet färskt i minnet.

  • Gawker Media is the second largest newspaper

    If the Gawker Media network was a newspaper it would be the second largest one, only surpassed by The New York Times. It isn’t though, rather this is more buzz from network head honcho Nick Denton, re-posted by The Awl. Who said the media landscape isn’t changing?

  • Nyheter24 lär av Gawker

    Journalisten berättar att man tillämpar grundlön med rörligt tak beroende på antalet sidvisningar som genereras på Nyheter24. Det är en modell som Nick Dentonsbloggnätverk Gawker Media, med just Gawker i spetsen, har kört hela tiden. Med tillhörande spott och spe från journalistkårer och kickade bloggare som inte genererat nog med visningar.

    Kritiken är lika självklar som riktig. I jakten på fler sidvisningar är det lätt att glömma bort saker som kvalitet och etik.

    Samtidigt är det svårt att bortse från den enkla matematiken här. Gör man en redaktionell produkt på nätet så är sidvisningarna om inte reda pengar, så åtminstone nära på. Så klart modellen upprör och irriterar, i många fall med all rätt. Nyheter24 låter jag dock vara den här gången, nöjer mig istället med att konstatera att det här bara är början. Vare sig vi gillar det eller ej.