Tag Archives: Gawker Media
Gawker Paid $12,000 For Brett Favre’s Pictures Sent To Jenn Sterger
Gawker Media founder Nick Denton revealed how much that he paid for pictures that NFL Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre sent to Jenn Sterger: $12,000. “I love paying for information,” stated Denton at the Business Insider Ignition conference last week. Deadspin’s traffic increased by millions. The blog post with the pictures have close to 5 million hits so far. [BusinessInsider]
Categories Brett Favre, Gawker Media, Jenn Sterger, Nick Denton
Leave a comment
Gawker Pulls Down Excerpts Of Leaked Sarah Palin Book After Take-Down Notice
Gawker.com has taken down leaked excerpts from Sarah Palin’s unreleased and upcoming book “America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag” from their website after being hit by a lawsuit by HarperCollins. The injunction prohibits Gawker from “continuing to distribute, publish or otherwise transmit pages from the book.” There is a hearing expected on November 30th as well. The blog post that had the leaked excerpt now leads to a 404 error message. [AllThingsD]
Categories Gawker, Gawker Media, HarperCollins Publishers, Sarah Palin
Leave a comment
How does Gawker determine whether it will pay for a scoop?
This is a guest post by Simon Owens, a social media consultant and online journalist. You can read more about him on his blog at Bloggasm.com and follow him on Twitter at @simonowens.
It seems that every time a blog under the Gawker Media banner breaks a major, internet-consuming story — whether it’s an iPhone prototype, nude pictures of Brett Favre, or a first-person account of a 25-year-old’s sleepover with Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell — there’s a certain subset of media critics who focus on Gawker-owner Nick Denton’s payment for the scoop. This despite the fact that paying for stories is a rather common business decision made by dozens of news outlets, including tabloid magazines and even major TV news networks (who pay exorbitant “licensing fees” to gain access to exclusive photos, which almost always result in an exclusive interview as well).
(more…)
Categories Gawker, Gawker Media, Jason Chen, Nick Denton
Leave a comment
AT&T Confirms iPad Security Breach, FBI Asks Gawker To Retain Documents
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) admitted this past week that there was a security hole in their website which leaked customer email addresses. Goatse Security claimed that they were responsible for the intrusion. Goatse said that they exploited an opening in AT&T’s website for finding numbers that identify iPads that are connected to their service.
(more…)
Categories AT&T, AT&T Inc., Escher Auernheimer, Gawker Media, Goatse Security
Leave a comment
Nick Denton Says Leaking New iPhone Details On Gizmodo Did Not Make Extra Profit
A story written by Gizmodo editors Jason Chen and Jesus Diaz about the new iPhone has hit about 8 million views, 9,000+ diggs, 35,000+ retweets, etc. You figure Gizmodo brought in a lot of extra money for parent company Gawker Media and the company founder Nick Denton. However Denton admitted that breaking the news about the new iPhone did not make him any extra money. To buy the iPhone from the thief, Gawker paid $5,000. On top of that there was $7,000 in extra bandwidth for the servers. Chen and Diaz will most likely be paid for traffic bonuses too. And lastly are “whatever legal bills we end up paying,” said Denton. [DailyFinance]
Categories Apple iPhone, Gawker Media, Gizmodo, iPhone, Nick Denton
Leave a comment
CBS Hires Richard Lawson From Gawker
Its not every day that you see a traditional media company poach from a new media company, but this is exactly what happened when CBS hired Richard Lawson from Gawker Media.
Lawson will be writing for TV.com in a role that is similar to what he already has been doing for Gawker: writing what is happening on famous TV shows.
Lawson will be writing fewer posts per day and do actual reviews. Lawson has supposedly been generating 2.4 million pageviews per month for Gawker, more than any of Gawkers’ others writers.
[via BusinessInsider]
Categories CBS, CBS Corp, CBS Corporation, CBS Interactive, Gawker Media, Richard Lawson
2 Comments
Ryan Tate Replaces Owen Thomas At Valleywag
Owen Thomas has stepped down from Valleywag in order to pursue a career at NBC. Ryan Tate will be the official replacement for Thomas. Thomas decided to leave because he misses managing his own website.
Tate has previous experience at Business 2.0 and Upside magazine. He has actually been in the Gawker family for about a year now since he left the San Francisco Business Times. Gawker is even looking for another editor for Valleywag to run breaking news after 7PM Eastern time. Valleywag was recently merged in to Gawker.com.
[via Valleywag]
Categories Gawker Media, Owen Thomas, Ryan Tate, ValleyWag
Leave a comment
Former Defamer Editors Joining Movieline
In late February, Defamer.com was rolled into Gawker.com. This put Seth Abramovitch, Kyle Buchanan and S.T. VanAirsdale out of a job. However they were given another opportunity in the form of blogging once again for Movieline.com. Movieline was originally a magazine that started in 1989 and was stringing along for a couple of years. Jane Fonda was on the first cover of the magazine. Jay Penske, the son of automobile racing team and Penske Corporation founder Roger Penske set-up the revamping of Movieline. Movieline will be part of Mail.com, the company that was relaunched by Penske and raised $35 million in funding last year.
Defamer Emulates Valleywag’s Fate; Folds Into Gawker
Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media has decided to fold Defamer into Gawker.com in order to assimilate to a struggling economy. This past December, it was rumored that Defamer was up for sale, but I suppose that there wasn’t any good enough offers. Defamer will simply become part of Gawker’s entertainment section.
Defamer.com will still remain open but their posts will feed into Gawker’s feed. Gabrie Snyder, Gawker’s managing editor will oversee the transition. Defamer is about four years old. Gawker brings in about 3 million visitors per month. This is four times the number that they were receiving a year ago.
Defamer writers Seth, Stu, and Kyle will be out of a job at Gawker, but the company is now hiring a Hollywood gossip writer. This past November, Valleywag was also rolled into Gawker.
[via NickDenton.org, Defamer]
Categories Defamer, Gawker Media, Nick Denton
3 Comments
Zuckerberg: On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information
I knew there was something fishy about the Consumerist article that claimed Facebook had the rights to use your content for any reason even if you deactivate your account. Gawker’s network built itself on stirring up controversy. In this case, Consumerist took advantage of people fearing that Facebook is becoming too much of a “big brother” social network. No need to freak out about your photos on Facebook as long as you can trust your friends.
“When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information,” stated Mark Zuckerberg on the Facebook blog. “One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.”
Facebook Beacon on the other hand was a blatant violation of privacy. Sometimes it is good to keep Facebook on their toes about their TOS. Well done in spotting the changes, Consumerist.
Categories Consumerist, Facebook, Gawker Media, Mark Zuckerberg
Leave a comment