New Yorker business writer John Cassidy wrote a blog post to follow up on the magazine’s recent profile of Gawker chief Nick Denton. In Mr. Cassidy’s view, “the man who won the internet” doesn’t have everything figured out yet. New York magazine considered framing their profile of Mr. Denton earlier this month as “Nick Denton is the next Rupert Murdoch.” But he’s a long way off, according to Mr. Cassidy. In some ways, old media companies are growing faster than Mr. Denton’s sites online, and it’s only going to get harder for Gawker to keep up with the quality of content they produce. It’s also very difficult, Mr. Cassidy argues, to support a media company with money from online display advertising alone:
According to Quantcast, the average visitor to Gawker views about four pages, which means he or she scans the home page and clicks on three stories. When I just did this, it took me about three and a half minutes. (Admittedly, I didn’t read the comments.) Now, I’m no ad salesmen, but my guess is it isn’t easy persuading Citibank or Unilever to buy ads for any publication (online or offline) to which a good many readers devote less than five minutes a day, all the time hoping their boss isn’t watching.
