Battening down·
We've never liked crowds, nor believed in their wisdom. Gawker launched and expanded in the middle of the web bust; as, four years later, web 2.0 enthusiasm reaches dizzying new levels, it's time for another perversely countercyclical move. We're retrenching: disposing of two of our 15 sites, Sploid and Screenhead, and reshuffling staff on four more, Gawker, Gizmodo, Wonkette and Gridskipper.
Why?
First, advertising is a fickle thing. Particularly the entertainment advertising upon which so many websites depend. A change in the advertising industry's conventional wisdom, cutbacks by the studios: it wouldn't take much to prick the current exuberance. Better to sober up now, before the end of the party.
Second, operational costs are increasing. For editorial talent, we now pay within the range of mainstream media. Technology expenses are growing even faster. The open-source publishing systems, upon which most weblogs depend, cannot handle larger and more sophisticated sites. The expansion of internet media is inflating costs for services such as ad-serving.
Third, it's easy enough to start a site; increasingly tough to attract attention. Readers tend to give new Gawker sites an initial look at the very least, and we do cross-promote. But each site ultimately stands alone, and succeeds on the uniqueness of its proposition and the quality of the items. There are no sure things.
Fourth, it's hard to turn around a title. They're either hits or flops, generally, and the die is cast within the first few months. [See traffic charts.] We've only once ever revived a flailing property, Kotaku, on videogames, which had a wobbly start, but now scores more than 5m pageviews each month. Like a TV network, we have to back our hits, and clear out our schedules of the less popular shows.
Finally, even successful sites such as Gawker and Gizmodo can settle into comfortable habits. Over time, on the same beat, all journalists get into a routine, or too close to sources, or go native. For Gawker titles, which have always sought to take the outsider's perspective, this is a particular risk. We need always to be open to fresh editorial talent, even if that means wrenching changes.
So, Gawker's battening down. The domain names, archives and graphics of Sploid and Screenhead, which attract pageviews a month of 900k and growing and 500k respectively, are for sale. They're two of our favorite names. The writers, Ken Layne and Scott Ross on Sploid, and Dong Resin on Screenhead, are among the blogging greats.
The categories of news and humor ought to be traffic magnets. The Gawker formula, of geeky obsessiveness, wasn't appropriate to these titles. Some other owner may make better use of them. For more information on the bidding process, please contact Gaby Darbyshire -- gaby@gawker.com.
In other changes, Gawker's Jesse Oxfeld, Gizmodo's John Biggs and Wonkette's David Lat are leaving the company.
In an internal reshuffle, Gridskipper's Chris Mohney will become managing editor of Gawker.com itself. He and Jessica Coen will be joined by Alex Balk, who's best known for the TMFTML blog, and has often guested on Gawker.
Gridskipper's new editor is Joshua David Stein, who's written for Topic Magazine and Flavorpill, as well as contributing to our travel site from Paris.
Alex Pareene will continue as editor of Wonkette. We are still evaluating candidates for the second slot on the Washington, D.C. site. Applications and ideas to Lockhart Steele -- lock@gawker.com.
