Leading Gossip Web Site May Have Jumped the Shark
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Just a few short months ago, the only thing as important to a New York editor or writer as a morning cup of coffee was a quick check of the gossip Web siteGawker.com. The blog could be counted on for a roundup of rumors, from the bathrooms of Conde Nast to the lofts of SoHo.
Though still the leading Manhattan gossip site, Gawker says its number of unique visitors has been 375,000 a month since July, and the center of gravity of that readership may be shifting from New York press insiders to a more mainstream audience.
“You just don’t hear about Gawker as much,” the founder of the trade site mediabistro.com, Laurel Touby, said. “The buzz is not as high as it used to be. I was forced to read it before. Now, not so much.”
After years as the biting monarch of the gossip world, gawker.com may have reached a plateau – or even begun a decline. Much as when the Fonz waterski jumps over shark-filled water on television’s “Happy Days,” in a scene that has become a symbol of desperation in the industry, Gawker.com may have jumped the shark.
Gawker’s founding editor, Elizabeth Spiers, established the site’s tone in 2002, almost single-handedly reviving the term “snarky” – used by others to describe her wit. Her successor, Choire Sicha, ran off 12 straight months in which he scooped more established gossip sites and earned source kudos from Page Six and the New York Observer, among others. But since the August promotion of Mr. Sicha to editor in charge of all Gawker Media sites, the once-hip flagship blog has lost a little steam.
“It’s less in-your-face,” an editorial assistant at Vanity Fair, Jon Kelly, said. “There are more sites that stalk celebs. It’s more peripheral.”
The New York Times’s BoldfaceNames, pagesix.com, and lloydgrove.com have all started squeezing Gawker for readers and scoops – and drawing off some of the Manhattan insiders Gawker covets.
The publisher and mastermind behind the Gawker Media empire, Nick Denton, was reached briefly by phone but declined to comment for this piece. Mr. Denton did have an assistant send by e-mail a string of recent items to show Gawker is not “pulling its punches.”
One of those links pointed to an October 7 item titled “Top 10 Things Judith Miller Can Do In Prison,” which included getting “into the habit with Sister Peter Marie.” Ms. Miller is the New York Times reporter who faces an 18-month contempt sentence for refusing to cooperate with federal prosecutors investigating a leak. Sister Peter Marie is the prison shrink in the HBO prison series “Oz.”
The head of one of Mr. Denton’s competitors, Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc., said he found Gawker’s Miller piece “offensive.”
“I think the latest writer is overcompensating and trying to prove that they’re not selling out,” Mr. Calacanis said.
When Gawker is not crossing the line to bad taste, the site’s items have become repetitive, harping on the Olsen twins, Paris Hilton, and Tina Brown.
“I think Gawker is becoming more institutional as time moves on,” the publisher of the New York City bloggothamist.com, Jake Dobkin, said.
One of Jon Kelly’s colleagues at Vanity Fair, an editorial assistant, Meaghan Nolan, said she still reads Gawker but finds its humor “less consistent” than in days past.
“They had a big,big build-up,”a widely known press watcher and blogger,Jim Romenesko,said,”and now they’ll come down a bit. I’m sure Wonkette will eventually undergo that whole knockdown phase too.” Wonkette.com is a popular Washington-based site focusing on government and politics.
Gawker’s founding editor, Ms. Spiers, who’s now a contributing writer for New York magazine, said she’s proud of how the site has grown since her departure.
“Everything starts out flashy and new.” She said. “After people get used to it, it loses some of that.”
The open question on Gawker, and on like sites, is whether a blog can survive the departure of the personality behind it. Gawker Media’s most popular blog right now is Wonkette. The site’s popularity may be driven by the intensity of the presidential contest, but the sexual references and particular tone of the Wonkette herself, Ana Marie Cox, have helped it rise above the rest.
“That’s the inherent problem with blogging,” Ms. Touby, the mediabistro “cyberhostess,” said. “You are reliant on that one person. If that person sucks, the blog gets less traffic, or if she’s fantastic, that person leaves and you get less traffic.”
Even as people expressed their dissatisfaction with the current state of Gawker, they’re generally willing to give its new editor, Jessica Coen, some time to grow into her job.
“The new writer Jessica is still finding her niche; I still miss the voices of Choire and Elizabeth,” another gossip blogger, David Hauslaib, said.
And some people are still huge fans of the site.
“I read it a couple times a day,” a GQ senior editor, Jason Gay, said. “People who say they don’t read it anymore are lying. Where else are you gonna go? It’s the clearing house for gossip in the New York media market.”