Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, is acquiring Consumerist.com from Gawker. Consumers Union plans to keep the blog as-is. Consumerist’s editorial team will stay on board as well. Nick Denton mentioned the troubled advertising market as a reason for the sale. He put Consumerist on the block in November.

Consumers Union will use the blog as a marketing tool. They hope to acquire younger subscribers through the blog.

Consumerist gets 1.8 million unique visits  a month. But attracting advertisers is hard for the site because it bashes brands and companies. Consumers Union does not accept advertising on its magazines so they will not be accepting advertising on Consumerist after the sale.

Nick Denton, millionaire and founder of Gawker Media.  Gawker is one of the most visible media companies today with 12 subsidiary blogs.  The 12 blogs include Gawker.com, Defamer, Fleshbot, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Consumerist, io9, Kotaku, and Jezebel.

Denton is putting Consumerist for sale and is rumored to be consolidating Valleywag, a gossip blog centered around Silicon Valley into Gawker.com.  Standing alone, Valleywag receives about one million monthly uniques.

Owen Thomas, editor at Valleywag will be keeping his job but will be publishing on Gawker.  Gawker has between 100-150 employees.

Why is Gawker doing this?
Gawker receives more hits and has a lot more of a broader market.  This makes it easier to sell advertising.  Imagine if you were an advertising company and Gawker is pitching that they own a blog on Internet celebrities and another blog on every single celebrity.  Which would you invest in?

[Via AlleyInsider]

I’m impressed with Gawker Media, a network of blogs started by Nick Denton.  If I miss a major event like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Macworld, or the Detroit Auto Show, I always looked at the newspapers for the pictures.  But between Jalopnik and Gizmodo, I did not have to attend the Detroit Auto Show or CES to get a feel of what is happening at the event.  These two blogs have the most number of pictures I have seen for any of those given events.

The automotive industry in America seems to be in such peril and this is reiterated all over the media, but the Detroit Auto Show is the automotive industry’s time to shine.  The angles and photography of all the cars I’ve seen on Jalopnik are just amazing.  A lot of these pictures get uploaded in real-time.  Looking at these pictures makes me feel like a kid again when I used to attend the show almost every year.

I believe that the reach Gawker Media has makes them qualified enough for an acquisition as big as Weblogs Inc.  Its too bad that some of their editors tend to be big on pranks, thus causing Gizmodo to be potentially banned from further CES events.

New Media: 1, Old Media: 0.

Curbed is a New York, NY-based real estate network blog that focuses on local events and architecture.  The blog network raised $1.5 million recently from a plethora of investors including Nick Denton (founder of Gawker Media), Zach Nelson (CEO of NetSuite), Joanne Wilson (wife of Fred Wilson, author of A VC blog), and Brad Inman (founder/publisher of Inman News). 

Curbed was founded by Lockart Steele and he is a former managing editor of Gawker Media.  Steele founded Curbed before working for Gawker, but went back to working for Curbed after leaving Gawker.

“We’re not just about real estate,” stated Steele.  ”People come to the site to talk about their neighborhoods and about life in the city.”  Some of Curbed’s advertisers include American Express and Volkswagen.

The New York Times’ Dan Mitchell broke the news of the funding.