By Kat Stoeffel 6/27/12 8:00am

Features

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Deadliest Klatsch: Nick Denton Gives Gawker’s Drive-By Peanut Gallery a Promotion

“When someone comes into your house and throws shit around, you get pissed,” Anna Holmes told The Observer. She was speaking in metaphor: The house was the Gawker Media women’s interest blog Jezebel, of which she was the founding editor; the someone was the blog’s commenters, a famously undisciplined crowd.

“If you open your front door to people they just act like jerks,” agreed former Gizmodo editor Joel Johnson. Now the managing editor of Animal NY, he favors abolishing comments sections altogether.

Blog proprietor Nick Denton has a different plan—he’s giving them the run of the place. The commenters are creating content, after all, just like the writers. What’s the difference?

“I want to erase this toxic Internet class system,” he told The Observer in a gmail chat.

“Nick has always loved to subtly and not so subtly insult his employees,” said Gawker writer John Cook. “He thinks of us as glorified commenters.” Read More

By Foster Kamer 1:48pm

Icebreakers!

Ruh Roh Scocca

Welcome to Gawker Media, Your Desk Neighbor Hates You and Will Blog About It

Today’s apparently a big day at Gawker Media! In addition to the beginning of the tenure of new sales VP Andrew Gorenstein—sent to Gawker by way of Conde Nast—it is also the first day former Slate columnist (and Observer media reporter) Tom Scocca begins at Deadspin (officially, now that his co-workers hate him)! We know this because his bullpen neighbor—sister-site Jezebel’s Tracie Egan Morrissey—blogged about what an awful person he is to sit next to. Read More

By Zeke Turner 7/12/10 2:03pm

Jezebel’s Moment Is A Letdown

“This is Jezebel’s moment,” Nick Denton says at the end of The New York Times piece about Gawker’s women’s blog in today’s Business section.

The piece is flatly expository. “Who exactly is Jezebel?” the reporter asks at the end of the first paragraph, before going on to talk about traffic, ad revenue and Read More

By Spencer Morgan 1/20/09 8:53pm

The New Math of the Male Mind: One, Zero

One sunny afternoon a few summers back, some dudes gathered at Guy Mellitz’ studio apartment on 21st Street and Third Avenue to bro-out.

There was Ted, an aspiring James Taylor type; Jason, an aspiring TV editor, who occasionally played fiddle to Ted’s guitar; Subieta, a friend of Jason’s from Read More

By John Koblin 8/29/08 12:49am

Who’s Sitting Where in Invesco Field Press Box?

Even this populist Democratic National Convention has a seating chart, and therefore a social hierarchy.

According to the DNC’s rubric, The Washington Post is deserving of the better seat than The Times, and Jezebel and Glamour deserve a closer seat than The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones and Portfolio.

First, a little background. There’s Read More