Age of the Geek

Gawking at Gawker
     If you look up “Gawker” on Google, the first thing you’ll see is a link to the website followed by the tagline “Today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news.” That short introduction should tell you all you really need know about the website’s philosophy regarding journalism ethics.
     Embodying the worst qualities of tabloid journalism and applying them to online media, Gawker and its satellite brands have long been at the forefront of click-bait stories written without regard to any actual newsworthiness. Lifehacker and io9 are OK for casual reading, but others like Kotaku and Jezebel are the among worst of the Internet’s bottom feeders, operating only slightly above those ridiculously biased sites you’d never even hear of if you didn’t have that one relative posting their falsehoods on Facebook.
     It’s a business model that served them well, up until a couple weeks ago when they published a story that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
     The details of the story weren’t relevant enough for print then so I won’t repeat them now. What is relevant is the nearly universal backlash Gawker has received for their latest transgression. After putting up with a long history being unapologetically awful, it appears that greater society has finally decided that they have had enough of Gawker’s brand of “news.”
     Backlash was so great that Gawker owner Nick Denton went over the heads of his executive editor and pulled the story at the recommendation of his managing partners. This, hilariously, led to Executive Editor Tommy Craggs and Editor-in-Chief Max Read to resign in protest, representing what may possibly be the first public consideration for journalistic ethics ever seen from a Gawker editor.
     Needless to say, business-as-usual at Gawker is no longer business-as-usual. Already under the shadow of Hulk Hogan’s $100 million lawsuit, which the company is in no position to pay if the court finds against them (particularly if it turns out they were responsible for leaking the transcript that recently ended Hogan’s contract with WWE), Gawker is in no position to withstand further harm to their brand.
     Gawker’s toxicity costs the company an estimated $20 million a year in “Gawker Tax,” which represents the cost of selling brands that can blow up at a moment’s notice. The Gawker Tax has long been a part of the business model, but as Adland.tv writer David Felton recently wrote, “If I were a media buyer, I would advise my clients to avoid them like the plague,” in his column “Gawker Just Went From Toxic To Radioactive.”
     In the face of such a disaster, Gawker is trying to adapt to the situation as best they can, which doesn’t appear to be much. Editorial staff will be meeting over the next month to hash out a new editorial code. One that would hopefully earn a passing grade at a first-year Intro to Journalism class.
     But I doubt it. Denton’s own journalistic philosophy, which centers around “the version of a story a journalist tells over a drink” is so undermining to responsible journalism that it’s almost guaranteed Gawker’s “20 percent nicer” incarnation will still be 80 percent garbage.
     In either case, whether Denton can steer his ship through this storm or if he’s simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, it seems that the days of Gawker giving journalists a bad name are coming to an end.
     Good riddance.

 
     Travis Fischer is a newswriter for Mid-America Publishing and actually did pay attention in his journalism class.