A typical conversation during the holidays, be it with friends or acquaintances, almost always included one question: "So, Rod, what's going on at Gawker?" To which I would give the ever-same reply: "You know as much as I do." It's never been a secret of mine that I'm not in some secret Gawker fraternity. I never had coffee with Emily Gould. Never made out with Choire Sicha. In total, my face-to-face interactions with Gawker editorial could be counted on one hand. Actually two, as Choire and I would see each other on Fire Island randomly and say quick hellos at the Pantry and other odd places. As for Nick Denton, I saw him once at a friend's party, introduced myself, and then quickly ran back to where I had stashed my bottle of Veuve. Summary: I sent stories which were then edited and published.
Some of my inquisitors were at holiday parties. Others were at more ethereal (a word I've always preferred to virtual) places. Many have been up in arms about changes made recently. There has been a stated change to a make Gawker a more "news-gathering" organization with more exclusive content. There are new writers. Some columnists are, well, no longer columnists. Some that use Gawker as the crutch that gets them through their fluorescent-lit office day are expressing dissatisfaction. As I seem to be continuing to send in my occasional contribution, maybe I can put these transitions in a different light.
What follows is sort of my take on the situation. A poorly-researched hodgepodgery ramble of factoids that form the basis of my opinion. That opinion? Yes, Gawker is changing; just like it always has.
What was Gawker when it started way back in December 2002 when Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers were "revolutionary"? Using the Internet's Way Back Machine, it's fairly easy to take a look. The first iteration available in archive format is February 2003. In addition to it's self-description, external reviews
were posted. A favorite calls it Manhattan's version of Pop Bitch.
(Which brings to mind: Whatever happened to Pop Bitch!? Turns out PB is still around, with ugly formatting (as always) making it barely readable.)
Moving forward in the year, some staples by which Gawker (Gossip Roundup, To Do listings, Gawker Stalker) would be known were all in place, although the formats were nascent. There's even an odd little thing, Gawker Personals, which isn't well shown in the archive, but, if memory serves, was actually a compendium of personal ads into which several sites (such as the Village Voice) were linked and probably a generator of Web 1.0 ad revenue.
Introduction of a "text only" version for mobile devices in October illustrates the
"must-ness" the site soon possessed. (Which reminds me: Send note to
someone there and suggest an iPhone version. Facebook has one. And
Gawker takes forever [FOREVER] to load on iPhone.)
A check of topic categories in November displays that the site has
expanded in scope a bit. And at some point Elizabeth Spiers leaves and
hoppy-bunny Choire Sicha becomes the editor. (Again, this is not a
definitive history; it's an textual flow chart without boxes or
arrows.)
Sicha Era One brings in some new features, expanding the site from the
original description. Included is more exploration of the odd world of Teh Internets. (Also,
catching my memory by surprise, are interviews by Andrew Krucoff. I'm a 
huge
fan of interviews. My "Babs" has always been Walters, not Streisand.)
By summer of 2004, change occurs again, with Senor Sicha elevated (?)
to Editorial Director and new editor, Jessica Coen. At the time
regular readers that I knew were talking about the end of Gawker coming
with the influx of an editor from SoCal.
(Nevermind Alabama Spiers or San FranSicha.) But of note to this
quickly growing overlong essay is the fact that the categories listed
on the site, its "core" if you will had changed only from horizontal to
vertical. The topics remained the same at first. But to be honest, I
stopped reading at this time. Possibly because I had started a new
job, but still.
There are guest editors during this period: Matt Haber and Alex
Pareene. Eventually joining up as editor along with Coen is Jesse
Oxfeld. It is during this period that a new "identity statement" is
added to the masthead: "Your daily source for Manhattan media and
gossip. Gawker, reporting live from the center of the universe." But
perhaps more telling, is the listing of "Hot Topics". In March 2005
Paris Hilton leads and Tara Reid, as she often did of Paris back then,
follows.
By this point, Gawker was quickly coming one of the gold standards of the blog world and a big player in the world of general media. To be linked on Gawker was, for any blog writer (sorry, but blogger just sounds too much like booger and always has) was a goal. And to fully disclose, one of my first targets when I started this tiny site was to get a link; a mission accomplished in my first month. As more and more bloggers sought the Gawker blessing, the Blogorrhea tag was born.
Further community was built by the addition of comments in September 2005. To keep site integrity (and avoid the "FIRZT!1!!" crowd), comments were by invitation only at first. Later one could 'audition'. In the beginning, the comments tended to be in reaction to the content of the article at hand. This would in time change.
INTERMISSION ONE: Writer takes a break to eat and smoke some weed. Might watch some Robot Chicken. Frankly? Writer feels like this is becoming more something he "should" do as opposed to "wants to do". But maybe after a break writer will be be invigorated.
Where was I? Spiers, Sicha (I), Coen, Haber, Pareene (I), Oxfeld, Mohney, Balk, Gould, Shafir, Sicha (II), Pareene (II), Shnayerson, ...
INTERMISSION TWO: Ah, yes. Much better. And it's hours later. Someone just sent me a message on ManHunt. It was a troll. Ah, to be of lower standards. Sigh.
Okay, I'm already lost in my history, but the point is that the site has been in transition since it's inception. The content has adjusted along with those creating it. There are two unique elements about the most recent transition.
As the field of commenters has grown, many commenters have felt that their contribution to the site has overshadowed the content of the site itself. The limited numbers within my access would argue against that. Looking at the number of visits versus views, it would seem that while the site has maintained the number of visitor over the past year, those visitors are looking less at comments. Granted, I'm just looking at the size of the orange bar compared to the yellow, but that's really as deep as I care to dip my wick. There were protests from the smaller field of commenters at the exit of Coen and company as well, but as there were fewer commenters, those protests were less visible. For more insight on the commenters, I turn you to the commenters who are discussing the changes among themselves
The second, and to me more pertinent change, is to the site's mission. Gone is the word "Manhattan". This indicates a sea change. (And as someone whose contributions have been Manhattan-focused, this has been my bigger concern.) It's indicative of so many things in my hyper-active imagination. The growing genericization and increasing irrelevance of "New York City" in world culture being a huge one. Granted, to a degree the Past, Over series was about this very change. The newly gentrified, pacified, pasteurized city of my fever-dreams.
Then I take a quick look at the site today and see mention of Parker Posey, a patron saint of lower Manhattan. (Also? Denton is posting on a Saturday.) It's not gotten to the point of reporting on Jessica Simpson's latest shoes (assuming she is wearing shoes these days which is assuming she's even alive as, quite frankly I've never known that she was ever alive to start). There is other new content, some of which is clumsily executed and some of which remains the masterful studies of the New York media world that I've always salivated over.
So, in short, to those that ask me "What is up with Gawker?" and are frustrated by my shoulder shrug, the above is the answer. Anyone that knows me knows me to be parsimonious in speech. (Then why is this so wordy?) Now, instead of "I don't know. It's changing," I can now respond, "Well. If you've got twenty minutes or so you can go to my site and read about it. Now let's talk about, I don't know, something dirty."
