Gawker's Nick Denton recently brought light to a new site, CityFile. The site has, essentially, much of the content that Gawker, after it sought a broader (aka mass) audience, abandoned. The writing, while on the dry side for now, is promising.
A recent favorite post was the posting of the outgoing message on the house phone of Tinsley and Topper Mortimer. This type of irreverence will bring me back daily.
The question though is who is behind this site. A few facts.
- The first posting in the site's Daily File blog is dated May 22, 2008.
- The only known name on the site, announced on the same day at Gawker and Jossip and MediaBistro and Intelligencer, is Remy Stern (pictured), a former Radar
editorproject managerperson. Given the placements garnered on the official launch day, it's safe to say he's part of the blog-media clusterfuck. - The programming behind is sophisticated, which means that someone is financing it. The domain name is registered through GoDaddy in Stern's name. The offices are in one of the "affordable rental office spaces" Sunshine Suites at 419 Lafayette.
- Because the office spaces at 419 Lafayette vary from the size of a workstation to small office spaces, it is unclear whether it is a one man show, or whether there is a crew in place. Further obscuring this is the complete lack of names in the
masthead"about page".
Whatever the story, the site seems to consolidate much of the content that fascinates me. While Gawker, New York, and so many other venues have abandoned concentration on the "New York" story, the content thus far promises to remain focussed here. This alone will have me as a daily reader.
(Shit. I wonder if they're paying ...)
