Gawker Gives Up on Blogging (And That’s a Good Thing!)
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By Dylan F. Tweney
- November 30, 2010 |
- 11:40 pm |
- Categories: Media
Gawker founder Nick Denton is one of the most aggressive and successful blog publishers around.
Which is exactly why online news sites should be paying close attention to his new, and public, strategy intended to re-focus his snarky snack-bite empire on hard, original news, video, some aggregation and TV-like timing.
Denton started with a good gut understanding of what works online, and built a federation of blogs that exploit a similar model (low overhead, smart and fast writers, efficient tech and ad sales) to great effect. Gizmodo, Gawker, IO9, Lifehacker are all category-leading blogs, or close to it; some of them (like Gizmodo) are starting to compete with traditional media as well.
But what is more significant, his operation is devoted to objective, metric analysis in a way that no one else is. Every Gawker story publicly displays how many pageviews and how many new visitors to the site it has delivered. In addition, Gawker Media’s Manhattan headquarters has a large screen that prominently displays each writer’s traffic totals — numbers that figure into writers’ bonuses. Those numbers are at the core of the organization.
And carefully watching the data has shaped his strategy more than anything. It’s also led him to be way ahead of the curve in many cases (I’m thinking of the way he started planning, in 2008, for a 40% decline in ad spending, long before the rest of the media were willing to face up to what was coming).
It’s somewhat amazing, then, that he’s willing to share the results of his insights. Lifehacker today hosted his thoughts on where Gawker Media is going in 2011.
Now, this could be a classic head-fake, and perhaps Denton is only publishing this plan to throw the rest of us off. But I don’t think so. I think the advice in here is solid, and he’s publishing it because the odds of his slow-moving competitors actually being able to capitalize on this information are slim to none. Meanwhile, Denton raises his cred among smaller publishers, editors and writers, some of whom may be eager to work for him at some point.
Be that as it may, there are some good pointers in Denton’s roadmap.
Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
1. The news drives traffic — and more importantly, brings in new readers/viewers who later become return readers. Or, as Denton puts it, “aggressive news-mongering trumps satirical blogging.” Deadspin grew from a cult blog to a household name with its reporting on Brett Favre’s indiscretions. Gizmodo hired Wired magazine editor Joe Brown to shepherd features and long investigative pieces, including those from former Wired.com and Wired magazine writer Brian Gardner.
2. Aggregation is important for filling in the gaps between a few breakout stories each day. The solution? First, have two types of editorial staff: editors/curators, and reporters/producers/scoopmongers. Second, relegate the reverse-chronological “blog flow” to a sidebar, and make the big stories, not the filler, the center of attention.
3. Having a variety of content is important — even more so as your audience grows and becomes more diverse.
4. Photos, videos, and strong visual presentations work resonate with audiences now, and they don’t have to be full-blown videos to work.
5. You can sell video ads in banner ad spaces.
6. Gawker is being programmed more like a TV network, with time slots for stories and ad campaigns, and less like a newspaper or magazine.
7. Gawker is going after high-end brand advertising, the traditional stronghold of magazine companies like Hearst and Wired.com’s own Condé Nast — and the TV networks. To do that, they’re going to be moving up-market this year, trying to class up the joint while still being Gawker Media. Sponsorships and time-slot campaigns are the key to moving out of the doldrums of low-value, high-inventory web advertising.
Big media better watch out. Denton’s done with blogging; his next target is finding an even more profitable form of new media that blends aspects of blogging, magazine journalism, and TV.
And while that might be scary, Denton’s also showing off things that we are learning here at Wired.com as well. Reporting matters. Breaking news and getting scoops resonates with readers. And once you have that, you don’t have to be first with everything, and if you are late to a story, you can take the time to fill it out with smart commentary or additional, or contrarian, perspectives.
Threat Level and Danger Room are two great examples. Danger Room is a great mixture of original reporting, aggregation and smart commentary. Threat Level excels at original, smart and authoritative reporting on tough subjects, like cyber-crime, security and copyright — holding its own traffic-wise despite not having the velocity of a typical blog.
Denton’s new format will be very interesting to watch, and doubtless we’ll see many sites start to adopt pieces of it — probably right as Denton figures out his next step.
But rejoice, readers, writers and publishers: news is back, even if it doesn’t look like what used to land on your doorstep every morning!
Additional reporting by Ryan Singel
An earlier version of this essay appeared on Dylan Tweney’s website. For more real-time tech news, follow Dylan Tweney and Epicenter on Twitter!