Gawker - 2012 Editorial Change

2012 Editorial Change

In November 2011, Nick Denton announced that Deadspin editor-in-chief A.J. Daulerio would replace Remy Stern as editor-in-chief at Gawker. At the time, Daulerio was most well known for publishing a photograph of Brett Favre's penis at Deadspin, despite the recipient of the photograph, Florida State University Cowgirl Jenn Sterger, explicitly requesting that he not do so.

Daulerio shifted the focus of the site away from editorial content and more toward what he described as "traffic-whoring" and "SEO bomb-throws." Daulerio wrote of the site's editorial content contributors, "The writers not relegated to traffic-whoring duty will still post, just less frequently than many of them are probably used to." As part of Daulerio's changes, he printed a private e-mail to Nick Denton from NBC News anchor Brian Williams complaining about the weekend content and its coverage of Lana Del Rey on Saturday Night Live. NBC's public relations department asked the site to take it down, writing, "That was sent in confidence as friends and absolutely never intended to be public." Daulerio responded that e-mails are publishable and that people such as Williams should be "prepared for the tar and feathering that will follow." Williams reportedly received an apology from Denton, but on NBC's news magazine Rock Center Denton only said that it was a "mess up" but that he doesn't apologize for it.

Another change Daulerio initiated was to the site's commenter system. In April 2012, all "starred" commenters (people whose comments were automatically given prominence) lost their rankings. The new proprietary algorithm to promote comments, called Powwow, is done via a computer as opposed to human commenters. Andrew Phelps, writing for Nieman Journalism Lab, stated, "Half of people think Gawker is diluting its high-quality material with Chinese goats; the other half think Gawker should stick to Chinese goats and stop trying to do real journalism."

Since Daulerio took over the site many long-time writers have left, including Jim Newell, Matt Cherette, Brian Moylan, and Maureen O'Connor.