Gawker Media today launches a contract publishing service for advertisers, Gawker Media Contract Publications. The first project is a weblog sponsored by Nike. The company's Art of Speed advertising campaign is built around 15 shorts made by digital filmmakers and other artists.
So, the Business 2.0 piece on Gawker Media is out. For a business piece written by a gossip columnist, it's not as absurd as it could have been. Greg Lindsay, the writer, makes me out to be more cunning than I am -- but that's kind of flattering.
There's only one problem: Business 2.0's desperation to show that there is big business in independent internet media. Even if there isn't yet. Lindsay has to inflate or project forward the numbers, or there's no story.
You could argue that New York has no need for a gossip blog like Gawker. There's Page Six, and Rush & Molloy, and people in power are accustomed to a bit of mockery.
By contrast, in so far as a city ever needed a gossip rag, LA is crying out for a Defamer. For a city that's in many ways the cultural capital of the world, it's woefully under-gossiped.
Sure, the celebrity weeklies give the latest tittle-tattle on the reality TV romance of the week. But the real stars of Hollywood are the producers, and agents, and PR flacks, and studio execs, and screenwriters. They're usually behind the scenes. No longer.
Defamer is the latest blog title from Gawker Media, which also publishes Gawker, Gizmodo, Wonkette and Fleshbot. The designer of Defamer is Patric King, who also created the Fleshbot look and logo. Editorial director -- yes, we have editorial directors now -- is Choire Sicha. The editor, who also works as a Hollywood peon, is remaining anonymous.
An enjoyable blog media discussion last night organized by the Gothamist crew. My bit: a debate with Jason Calacanis of WIN -- yes, he's already picked out the stock ticker symbol -- about blog publishing. The best line? Calacanis, publisher of the defunct Silicon Alley Reporter, famously turned down an offer from Time-Warner for the dotcom magazine. This time, he's taking the money, first with an investment by Mark Cuban. When pressed by Jeff Jarvis, the moderator, to say how his latest company would make him, Calacanis said: "$20-30m -- and this time I'm going to take the money."
The event was pegged as a prizefight of the blog publishers. But Calacanis, who did most of the talking last night, and continues today, is his own worst enemy, far more lethal than I could ever be. So, in that spirit, I'll sign off it with a droll Calacanis quote I dug out, from an interview he gave in 2000.
When journalists believe that they should be millionaires and billionaires like the companies they cover, their careers are over. And that's what's happening... And I'm afraid that I'll lose my edge, I'm afraid that I'll get soft. I really enjoy being a journalist, and I don't want to muddy that with this expectation that I should be worth millions of dollars.
A novel use of Kinja. Andrea has put together a digest of weblogs ahead of the conference in Berkeley on China's Digital Future. The digest contains posts from various bloggers attending the event. To the extent they all write, Kinja will be an on-the-fly conference blog.
Over on the Kinja announcements page, a sampling of some digests I've recently discovered. A group of Montana bloggers are using Kinja to keep up with eachother, and there are links too to digests on fat acceptance and unitarian universalism. I'm glad to see Kinja is breaking out beyond the geeks and Lower East Side hipsters. Unitarian universalist digest [Kinja News]
The New York Times, the self-proclaimed newspaper of record, runs a profile of Wonkette, and takes the opportunity to vent all its prejudices about online media. The piece has, in turn, sparked a debate on sites such as Kausfiles and Slashdot about weblogs, journalistic ethics and libel laws. Which would be more interesting, if the article, by Julie Bosman of the Times, weren't so flawed.
Might as well get all the news out in one day. Once Kinja's bedded down, Meg Hourihan will be moving on. Meg's been project director since the start of the site, and what you see is her creation, along with the engineering team of Gina, Jim, Mark and Matt. I'm just the guy who writes the checks, and insists on pretty icons.
We're not going to refill the position, but have been searching for a Chief Technology Officer. Now that we've launched, most of the issues we'll face over the next few months will be to do with hardware, and scaling the system. We need a CTO with experience running high-volume high-availability sites. We have a couple of candidates, but the search is still open. If you're interested in the role, or know someone who would be a good fit, please email me at nick@gawker.com. I'll send the job specs.
As for future directions of the product... Meg, as well as remaining as chair of Kinja's board, will continue to consult. 37signals, the interface design consultancy, will be taking an ongoing role. And you can also send me your wishlists.
Kinja, a project we've been working on for more than a year, has just gone live.
Kinja -- a guide to weblogs -- springs from a simple idea. Weblogs may be the most interesting phenomenon in media in decades, but hold the enthusiasm: they've reached only a tiny minority of the internet audience. About nine in ten US internet users have never even visited a blog.
It's not for a lack of content that weblogs don't yet have a mass audience. For every interest, from baseball to sex, there are thousands of engaging sites. They're just hard to find, and then hard to remember.
If weblogs are to realize their potential, they need to reach beyond the pioneering communities of technologists and amateur political pundits.
I was, as they say back home, royally shafted. That's just like shafted, only worse. For those of you who doesn't follow every navel-gazing twist and turn of the blog world, Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc., a rival, poached one of Gawker Media's writers, Pete Rojas of Gizmodo.
An interesting discussion on Gizmodo, and blog media economics, at Michael Sippey's website. Sippey has some good ideas about what he'd do if he ran Gizmodo. I've posted some comments. Background: we just changed the editorial team at Gizmodo, Gawker Media's gadget site. Joel Johnson is standing in for Pete Rojas, and Brendan Koerner, of Wired and Slate, is guest-starring for a week. If I ran Gizmodo [Sippey] Gizmodo editorial changes [Gizmodo] Gadget wars [Buzz Machine]
Washington, DC has always been a mystery to me. So much power, and so little sex appeal. Hollywood for ugly people, as they say. But there's gossip, there just has to be. What DC lacks in sexiness, it makes up for in pomposity and hypocrisy. So, Wonkette, the latest blog in the Gawker stable. Wonkette is written by Ana Marie Cox, who used to edit the notorious Suck column, and now lives in the DC suburbs. She's funny. Wonkette
There's a charitable explanation for the explosion of federal spending under Bush: many expenditures rise automatically in a recession, and increased funding for the military and domestic security was inevitable after September 11th. But one has to wonder whether the Republicans' free-spending ways also reflect the party's changing voting base. The GOP is no longer the party of Wall Street and the Eastern establishment, the traditional constituency for fiscal responsibility. Bush depends on the South, the Rust Belt and the Farm Belt. Is it any wonder that the administration has increased military spending, which benefits the South more than any other region, has attempted indirect taxation through protection of the steel industry, and indulged agro-industry with farm subsidies? The Republicans have become a party of big government -- not by accident, or by recession, or by Osama, but because the Bush electoral coalition clusters round the federal trough. Conservatives simmer as spending mushrooms under Bush [USA Today]
If the US is to clamp down on foreign visitors, at least it should do so with a modicum of efficiency. I flew back to New York, yesterday, from London. Fingerprint and face scans? Fine. The camera looks as unthreatening as a webcam. But, putting aside any question of civil liberties, the logic of the new system is hard to discern. Short-stay visitors from Europe aren't subject to the scans; but those with a permanent visa, who have submitted far more documentation, are checked again. And, last night at Newark airport at least, there were two spot checks on leaving the plane, before the usual passport and customs control. In each case, the questions are rote; and the answers easily rehearsed. Wouldn't it make more sense to have one serious interview, with unpredictable questions, rather than four cursory checks? More than two years on, homeland security is still a shambles. BBC NEWS | Americas | US introduces new security checks [BBC]
You've heard of the Baghdad blogger, Salam Pax, who wrote his online diary under the eyes of Saddam's secret police. Meet the latest international blog celebrity: Naughty Mu, an indie chick from Guangzhou in southern China, who shags and tells. Or has done, till now. She was planning a book of extracts. Her publishers have been ordered to pull the plug. Naughty Mu is banned by the men in China's yellow room [Daily Telegraph]
I'm scouting for editorial talent. Particularly people who can write wittily about travel and furniture. If you have a blog on either subject, or know of a good writer, email me. Rather than me tell you how I'd like to approach the categories, I'd rather hear your ideas: what you think is missing. Correspondence to nick at gawker.
Gawker's looking for an illustrator for the logo of a new site. Going for a cutie-pie-storybook or naive-fashion look. There's a link below to one artist I like. Any ideas? Please email nick at gawker. Neryl Walker Andrew Sklar
Gawker Media today launches a contract publishing service for advertisers, Gawker Media Contract Publications. The first project is a weblog sponsored by 
You could argue that New York has no need for a gossip blog like 
The New York Times, the self-proclaimed newspaper of record, runs a 
Might as well get all the news out in one day. Once 
