Gawker's "brave last days," and a warning for New Media
Posted 42 weeks 3 days ago byAlexander Nazaryan at the New Criterion's glorious Armavirumque comes not to praise the original snarky media blog, but to bury it.
Quoth Nazaryan:
When Gawker first began, blogs were a renegade enterprise, sniping away at the edges of the media empire. They were seductive, and maybe even a little bit illict. But now, some five years later, each newspaper has a plethora of blogs, and any major event will be blogged about before a drop of ink is spilled.
These days, for a blog to continue to be relevant, it cannot merely take shots at the media: rather, it needs to offer the same quality of writing that one expects from a newspaper or magazine. The best blogs are essentially fora for the kinds of shorter pieces that might not make it into a monthly, or even a weekly, journal. They are not, as Gawker has become, a repository for YouTube videos or celebrity sightings.
I have no newspaper- or magazine-quality commentary to add at this time. May Nazaryan's warning resonate far and wide.
Update: And speaking of losing business models...
Thoughts
Duh
Submitted on January 27th, 2008 by MonkeyBradAlthough I was surprised to read of Gawker's apparent demise, I really shouldn't be for two reasons.
1) I had no idea what was going on at Gawker, specifically because I hadn't checked there in, oh, I don't know how long.
2) We should have remembered that with the accelerated pace of entry into the market, and accelerated pace of hitting the big time, there would be a complement of accelerated demise and near instant replacement. We all saw it coming, but rarely spoke of it.
The Fall of Gawker
Submitted on January 27th, 2008 by Jim LakelyHard to argue with that analysis, Ben. Just a year or two ago, sites like Gawker and Defamer were a mandatory daily check. Now? Not so much. It's just not as interesting. I think gossip sites have been swallowed by their beat and sense of self.
Instead of reporting on celebrity foibles (or worse), they've had to take it up another level, and abet it. And readers, at least in my house, see the unseemliness of it. Are repelled. And don't visit as often.