July 21st, 2015
As a general rule, I don’t like to see anyone lose their job. People have rent to pay and kids to feed. And I don’t follow Gawker much at all, because it was clear almost from the start what kind of publication it was and what sort of creature Nick Denton is.
That said, if I had spent a few years collecting string on Gawker I would have really enjoyed doing a piece like this from Ryan Holiday. It is . . . awesome.
Gawker isn’t going to die from its current imbroglio–there will always be a pack young liberal writers in New York willing to do anything for $40,000 a year.
What might kill Gawker is the Florida jury hearing Hulk Hogan’s civil suit against the company. Politics aside, all people of good will can be rooting for them to drop the big leg.
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Wow, I’d forgotten the Christine O’Donnell one — and that was particularly beclowning for them since the upshot of their own scurrilous gossip story was that no sex even occurred!
The psychic dilemma of emulating TMZ despite sniffily disdaining TMZ’s existence was always really evident over there. Besides, even NYC has a market saturation level for betchy gay dishing applied to all subjects, oh wait, “except lifehacks” — now that little irony, at the expense of the self-styled ironists, deserves to be savored
MattM July 22, 2015 at 2:00 am
I’m less bothered by the fact that Gawker has unpaid interns, than I am by the fact that some people are apparently willing to work for Gawker without even getting paid.
Do these people think their experience at Gawker is going help them get a job somewhere down the line? Is there a potential employer somewhere — other than Gawker itself — that’s going to see that someone worked at Gawker and think, “Oh, good. This shows that the applicant is [insert something good]”?
Admittedly, I work in a somewhat stodgy industry. But I would think that an association with Gawker would show that the applicant is gossipy, immature, perpetually outraged, and utterly lacking any mute button. People who work at Gawker either think that publicity is validation, or they are so lacking in moral scruples that they’re willing to pretend that’s true. And they’re either unwilling to unable to appreciate that their actions may hurt other people.
Hiring a Gawker intern is also a great way to have your dirty laundry published for the world to see, probably via anonymous tips to Gawker. At best, that employee is probably going to start an anonymous blog that talks about the office and provides “funny” nicknames for their co-workers (“Another pointless office meeting today. Fatty McFatterson took the last bagel and ate with her mouth open. I can’t even.”).