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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Gawker

1. March 15, 2011 11:39 AM

   A Glimpse into WaPo’s Editing Practices

   By Joel Meares

   Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan reports that earlier today The Washington Post published a story online by The Courier-Journal’s Laura Ungar that was a little unfinished. In fact, the story appeared to be a first draft with editor’s notes included in big, scary ALL-CAPS. The story—about how a lack of health insurance and/or unawareness can lead to too-late detections of cervical cancer—has...

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2. January 26, 2012 08:54 PM

   Audit Notes: Mortgage Bonds, Junkets, Digital Hype

   By Ryan Chittum

   Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism flags what she calls a "bombshell" analyst report on the mortgage-backed securities market. The report says $175 billion of mortgage losses haven't been passed through to the bonds they comprise (and another $300 billion are "imminent") and that's inflating the market value of the bonds. The theory is that banks are delaying writing down these...

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3. March 22, 2012 03:13 AM

   Audit Notes: Skynet News, Gawker’s High-Low Strategy, Oil Speculators

   By Ryan Chittum

   Evgeny Morozov has a must-read piece at Slate on the rise of journalism bots, which Forbes now employs to write basic stories like earnings reports (emphasis mine): Yet the world of modern finance is increasingly dependent on automated trading, with sophisticated computer algorithms finding and exploiting pricing irregularities that are invisible to ordinary traders. Meanwhile, Forbes—one of financial journalism’s most...

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4. August 24, 2011 04:30 PM

   From Commenter to Contributor

   On some blogs, taking the comment section seriously can mean hiring people from it

   By Alysia Santo

   During a string of “boring, terrible” office jobs, Gabriel Delahaye started to regularly comment on Gawker’s articles. He wasn’t just doing this for fun. He had every intention of getting himself noticed: e-mailing tips to the editors and just making himself “a general nuisance.” He wanted to be a writer, and while he had a blog, he was trying to...

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5. March 22, 2012 02:42 AM

   Gawker Misreads the WSJ on Vaccines and Immunity (UPDATED)

   By Ryan Chittum

   Gawker totally misreads a Wall Street Journal story on numbskulls who don't vaccinate their kids, writing that it means "Oregonian Religious Nuts Are Going to Give Us All Measles." There is a certain percentage of the population that objects to giving their kids vaccinations, because of stuff like Jesus, some book, Jenny McCarthy, whatever. You know, crazy people. Fine, in...

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6. July 6, 2012 06:50 AM

   Gawker’s new comment system

   Will it help or hurt the site's young writers?

   By Peter Sterne

   Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton recently introduced a new commenting system, called Kinja, on his network of websites. Rather than showing all comments on a given article, Kinja shows only the most interesting thread of comments and replies. Denton hopes this will finally make reporters and sources pay attention to the comments instead of dismissing them; to help ensure that,...

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7. June 14, 2011 04:25 PM

   Gawker’s Rebound

   By Felix Salmon

   It's been more than six months since sales chief Chris Batty left Gawker Media as Nick Denton decided he was going to tear up the old way of doing thing and try something new. Since then, Denton has relaunched his sites to general dismay, and entered into a bet with Rex Sorgatz, which he will lose if Gawker Media fails...

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8. June 19, 2012 02:45 PM

   He said, she said

   Anyone can spread gossip with an iPhone, rather than depend on dishy columns

   By Kira Goldenberg

   Gossip, according to longtime New York Post columnist Earl Wilson, is hearing something you like about someone you don’t. I have no attachment to the celebrities whose tidbits were shared at a panel on gossip Monday night. But I’m not going to spill. I think people are allowed private lives, even though being in the know makes me a (momentary)...

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9. May 23, 2012 11:03 AM

   How Gawker wants to monetize comments

   Denton’s vision for Gawker Media’s editorial product moves away from posts

   By Felix Salmon

   Back in November, I grappled with the fact that online display ads in general, and banner ads in particular, are clearly not working very well; my suggested alternative was for brand advertisers to embrace the power of the external link. That was one suggestion; there are many, many more. But what they all have in common is that they’re attempts...

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10. April 25, 2012 03:53 PM

    Murdoch vs. Muto

    The "Fox News mole" is being charged for leaking to Gawker as Fox's corporate parent remains under fire for ethics violations

    By Kira Goldenberg

    Let me get this straight: Even as Rupert Murdoch’s media empire remains under official scrutiny for an allegedly extensive phone-hacking scandal, News Corp.-owned Fox News is going after a former employee for leaking internal information. That former employee is “Fox News Mole,” Joe Muto, who had been leaking inside details about Fox to Gawker (reportedly for money), but who lasted...

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11. July 19, 2012 06:50 AM

    Our gullible press

    Ryan Holiday explains how the singular pursuit of traffic makes online media suckers for fake news

    By Ryan Holiday

    One thing has been conspicuously absent from all criticism of online media and the future of news: an understanding of incentives. Incentives explain behavior. They explain nearly every major issue facing online media—from over-aggregation to speculative, iterative journalism, from pagination to the dearth of investigative reporting. I understand these incentives intimately for a simple reason: It's my job to exploit...

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12. February 10, 2011 12:22 PM

    Priceless: Representative Lee’s flexy photo

    By Clint Hendler

    Gawker is claiming quite the coup today—a congressional revelation turned to a resignation in the span of yesterday afternoon. Some of the Gawker’s most read scoops of the past year—Gizmodo’s early peek at the iPhone 4G, Brett Favre’s “dong shots,” or Christine O’Donnell’s night as a ladybug—share at least one thing in common: the information at the heart of the...

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