Monday, May 09, 2005
Nick Denton Gets It
A Blog Revolution? Get a Grip - New York Times
Nice story on Nick Denton's Gawker Media. Grab: He says that there is no magic behind Gawker Media, his three-year-old venture based in New York. To his mind, it is built around a basic publishing model.
Exactly.
And more:
The idea of grouping the blogs, Mr. Denton said, was to give the company an air of respectability. "The only reason we're listed as a group at all is for advertisers," he said. "Advertisers treat Gawker titles more seriously because it's part of a group."
The counterpoint:
But others have begun to wonder if the brand itself is a form of compromise. Stowe Boyd, president of Corante, a daily online news digest on the technology sector, suggests that there may be something lost when networks like Gawker Media and Weblogs turn blogs into commodities, churned out for a fee, owned by an overlord and underwritten by advertisers.
"They're pursuing a very clear agenda and they've done very well with that," Mr. Boyd said of Gawker. "But they're just an old media company in new media clothes, and I still maintain that they are missing part of the point."
The point being something about following your muse. Which is fine, if you want to keep an online diary, or create written performance art. But if you want to build an audience, a community, and make money from that, those old publishing models come in mighty handy.
Comments
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Nice story on Nick Denton's Gawker Media. Grab: He says that there is no magic behind Gawker Media, his three-year-old venture based in New York. To his mind, it is built around a basic publishing model.Exactly.
And more:
The idea of grouping the blogs, Mr. Denton said, was to give the company an air of respectability. "The only reason we're listed as a group at all is for advertisers," he said. "Advertisers treat Gawker titles more seriously because it's part of a group."
The counterpoint:
But others have begun to wonder if the brand itself is a form of compromise. Stowe Boyd, president of Corante, a daily online news digest on the technology sector, suggests that there may be something lost when networks like Gawker Media and Weblogs turn blogs into commodities, churned out for a fee, owned by an overlord and underwritten by advertisers.
"They're pursuing a very clear agenda and they've done very well with that," Mr. Boyd said of Gawker. "But they're just an old media company in new media clothes, and I still maintain that they are missing part of the point."
The point being something about following your muse. Which is fine, if you want to keep an online diary, or create written performance art. But if you want to build an audience, a community, and make money from that, those old publishing models come in mighty handy.
