Tag: Gawker

The Blogging Era Ends With A Whimper

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, (Undead) Gawker is wrapping up publication….AGAIN. It definitely seems as though this is the end of an era. I don’t know about you, but I live in something of a passive infotainment bubble that is centered around Twitter and Tik-Tok. I can’t think of one blog or news / entertainment site that I go out of my way to view on a regular basis.

And it’s probably only going to get worse with the advent of things like chatbots that scan the web then give you your answer based on a dataset.

I kind of makes me sad for a number of reasons. We — or at least I — have to accept that it’s over, all the fun I used to have with the old Gawker is never coming back, just like my wasted, dissipated youth.

So, in that regard, the Web is fully mature. We’re kind of waiting around for the Next Big Thing to happen and it’s not going to be some cool, new, snarky Website. It might be the equivalent of that in the metaverse or somehow something via a chatbot but the traditional blog is just no longer a viable commercial option.

In a way, Twitter does what Gawker used to do, but instead of a funny article, you just see a funny viral tweet. I will note, however, that the most traffic this lowly site has ever gotten came from something celebrity related. I think if you were going to try to start something like Gawker up, you would have to lean into celebrity culture in some way.

Though, I suppose there remains a very, very limited window of opportunity for someone to create a podcasting network that covers the major cities of New York City, San Francisco and LA then direct listeners to a blog of some sort. That’s the only way I can think of you might, just might, be able to bring back the fun of the original Gawker before it went nuts and got all nasty for no reason.

An Unexploited Podcasting Space

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As we enter 2023, I can’t help but be reminded of how the podcasting interesting has kind of entered something of a rut, at least to me as a listener. It would be fun if there was a young, hip — and snarky — podcasting network that evoked the early days of Gawker Media.

You would use the same formula that Nick Denton with the Gawker blogs — you setup semi-daily podcasts devoted to a the events around on specific city. So, New York City would be meda, celebrity and finance, LA would be devoted to showbiz and DC would be focused on politics and San Francisco devoted to tech. You hire young, passionate media people just out of college — read cheap — and let them have it.

Now, here and there you find podcast networks that have elements of this, but not all in one place. Some of the podcasts that Crooked Media does have potential, but they’re not really the focus of the Crooked Media network. If the podcasting network I propose became a success, you could direct listeners to blogs produced by your media company.

I have a feeling the money for such a dream has come and gone. Maybe if it was 10 years ago, you could pull this idea off. But podcasting pretty mature now. So, lulz. What do I know.

Sometimes, I Miss The Old Gawker: The Agony and the Ecstasy That Is Julia Fox

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really like Julia Fox. She’s got to be one of the weirdest, most interesting public women in the world right now. She claims she’s deadened to sex because of her time as a dominatrix when she was younger, but…lulz? Anyway, the thing about Ms. Fox is she’s a prime example of how there is a huge void in the media world at the moment.

Julia Fox

There is a space that isn’t being serviced — the old Gawker space.

Barring aliens landing on the front lawn of the White House and demanding a new Gawker being founded…I fear that era of media is over. Just like rock is sadly dead, the era of snarky celebrity coverage is dead, too. That era petered out just about the moment that Twitter cooped snark to the point that it’s everywhere and nowhere all at once.

So we have someone like Julia Fox and no one site to read about her exploits. All we have is a bunch of rabid Twitter accounts that follow her every twitch — and there are a lot of them. I mean, now she’s talking about how she only dated Ye because she wanted to get him out of Kim’s life? What the what?

And she does this all the while running around the major cities of the world in barely there “fashion forward” apparel. You can’t make this shit up.

Anyway. More power to you, Julia. You’re a very interesting woman and maybe when I blow up with my DJ money one day soon I might — might? — get to meet you. Wink.

Thanks For The Memories, Old Gawker, or ‘Don’t Meet (or Get Blocked By) Your Heroes’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I know why the first days of Gawker meant so much to me — I was going to a pretty dark phase of my generally dissipated life and reading the old Gawker back in the day really helped me out. It was like eaves dropping on a really cool conversation between two New Yorkers who otherwise would never give someone like me the time of day.

But that was the first few years of the “Old Gawker,” not the Undead Gawker that we have now. And, honestly, something really, really weird happened to Old Gawker in its final days. For people who were paying close attention to the site, it jumped the shark a few times to the point that there was not much point in reading it anymore. One a number of occasions, it posted spiteful, hateful and sometimes nearly obscene posts that seemed designed to drive people like me away from it.

By the time it was driven out of business by a Peter Thiel-funded attorney, it didn’t feel like that much was lost.

At some point between when the Old Gawker collapsed and the present day I discovered that one of my publishing heroes — Nick Denton, the founded of Gawker — blocked me on Twitter. I suppose, all things considered, that relative to his world view I probably deserved that. It still hurts, though.

Anyway, I’ve finally reached the age where I have to accept that it’s time to move on. Much of what made the Old Gawker so interesting is now found all over the Internet, specifically Twitter and a few corners of Tik-Tok. Barring something truly amazing, I’m never going to start my own Gawker-like publication.

This is it. Whatever happens, will probably happen in some way because I sell a novel in a traditional manner and even if that happens, I’ll be too old to really enjoy it the way I always wanted to.

An Unexploited Podcast Space

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I’ve said before, just checking my personal Webstats here, I can tell you that there is a huge market for celebrity news. And, as far as I know, while there are a lot of podcasts that deal with celebrity news, it seems like if you assembled an early-Gawker like team that you might be able to find some success.

You get a bunch of young, just out of college people to produce a series of different podcasts about different elements of the celebrity world then use whatever attention you get from doing that to direct the audience to a 2004-like Gawker. That’s how you would be able to bootstrap your site to success, even though the blog industry is very, very mature at this point.

Or, put another way, the aesthetic of the old Gawker doesn’t really exist in modern media. Most of the vibe of the early days of Gawker has drifted to Twitter to the point that we don’t even think about it. The average Twitter user is bombarded on a daily basis with crowdsourced snark.

But I do think if you could replicate the snark of Spy, Late Night With David Letterman and the original Gawker with a new podcasting network that you would find success. I just think that if you sort of had a Buzzfeed meets Gawker type podcast network then maybe there would be an audience. You draw people in to your podcast network by obsessing over celebrity then once people are listening or reading, you throw in some more serious reporting.

And, yet, it could be that my lingering obsession with the old Gawker is showing in the sense that, lulz, the old Gawker just isn’t coming back. No amount of me pining for it is going to make it happen.

So, I don’t know. I think that no amount of complaining on my part is going to change anything. Just like rock music is dead, it’s possible that the cool snarky content that I really enjoyed during a dark time in my life a long time ago simply isn’t going to come back.

The Vision Thing: How I Would Bootstrap A New Spy Magazine-Like Publication

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a lot, and I mean, A LOT of problems with any suggestion that there might be anything like the old Gawker. Now, when I say “the old Gawker,” I mean the Gawker of around 2003-2004 that was very similar to the even older idea of Spy Magazine. The later Gawker was shit and the new, Undead Gawker is just…undead.

But it’s a nice summer evening and I think I’ll give you my vision for how I would bootstrap a new Spy Magazine-Gawker type publication.

I think if you were serious about doing it, you start the process by starting not a blog, but a podcast. You get someone like Emma “It Girl” Chamberlain (or even SNL cast member Sarah Squirm) to talk about pop culture in a way that The Youngs like. You might, in real terms, build the product from the ground up around her personality. Or something. Maybe find someone else who is cheaper.

But the point is — find a really interesting person to host a near-daily podcast about celebrities and pop culture. Then once that’s gotten some traction, you establish a blog that you point people to from the podcast. That’s how you would build traffic to the site.

Now, from my obsession with Webstats, I can tell you that there is an insatiable interest in celebrities and pop culture. Some of the most traffic that comes to this blog — that almost no one reads — comes from people interested in a stray post about this or that celebrity.

I would suggest you obsess about Julia Fox’s every twitch. She’s such an interesting person that it’s a shame that there’s not one specific publication that simply details what she’s been up to. And then, once you get enough traffic to the blog, you start to cover politics. And then you maybe build out a podcasting network.

Ta-dah!

Vibe Shift: There’s A Media Space Not Being Served And It’s Aggravating

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Pretty much no one reads this blog. Most of the traffic comes from a trickle of people in Red States who have a boner for a civil war looking for how they can start murdering people like me for political reasons.

But, from my obsession with the analyzing the Web traffic of this Website, I can give you some sense of how one might start a new publication. The key take away from my all-consuming obsession with my traffic is there’s a real audience for celebrity news. It’s insatiable. The celebrity topic is one of the few things that people are willing to leave their passive media bubble to search for.

As such, if you wanted to start a new publication of some sort, I would suggest you really lean into covering celebrities, at least at first. So, I suppose if you wanted to get high concept you might say my idea is for TMZ meets BuzzFeed meets Spy Magazine Meets the old Nick Denton version of Gawker.

Or, put another way, I might suggest starting a podcast first that is hyper focused on snarky hot takes on celebrity news then build a Website out from that. Celebrity news definitely seems to be the clit of the infotainment industrial complex at the moment.

If you were to focus — as I’ve long suggested — on Julia Fox’s every public twitch then leverage that into politics and other infotainment elements you would have a hit on your hand.

Julia Fox

But who am I kidding. No one listens to me. Everyone gets all their information passively from Twitter, Facebook and Tik-Tok now. The only way my dream will ever come true is if I somehow managed to win the fucking lottery and do it myself.

Ugh.

‘Manifesting Destiny’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Occasionally, I’ll feel a sense of dread, or just the feeling that Something Big is about to happen. Sometimes, it’s nothing. Other times, I fucking break my ankle.

I generally think gambling is the devil’s business, but I’m so desperately poor and it fits into my general belief that I’m special and destined for some sort of quirky greatness (wink) that I do, on occasion play the lottery.

I probably spend way too much brain power thinking what I would do with a sudden, significant windfall. The last time I checked, Mega Millions was up to $600 million. That may have changed recently, but I’m too lazy to double check.

Anyway, in my effort to manifest me winning the lottery, here is what I would do with all that sweet, sweet cash if I somehow miraculously won it.

  1. Move To A Big City
    The first thing I would do is become one of those smug bi-costal people who humble brag about taking the Red Eye for this or that reason. With a few hundred million dollars to play with, I would buy two places to live — one in NYC and one in LA.
  2. Start A Publication
    With all that money, I would hit the ground running. I would, I don’t know, buy The Village Voice brand or something. Or think up a new name. But whatever it was called, I would throw some money into starting a publication in the tradition of Spy and Gawker. Building this new media empire would consume my life, just like ROKon Magazine in Seoul did.
  3. Hire Research Assistants For The Novels
    I would continue to develop and write six novels, but I would hire a few research assistants to lighten the load and make the end product much, much better.
  4. Be A Bon Vivant
    Rather than be one of those lottery winners that flamed out, I would be like Mark Cuban who, if we’re honest, pretty much just won the lottery when he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $1 billion back in the day. I would become an insufferable media personality that was always shooting my mouth off and doing weird, interesting things for the same of doing weird, interesting things.
  5. Start A Dive Bar
    I would find a small venue somewhere cool in NYC and start a dive bar like Nori in Seoul where I used to DJ. I would be the DJ on the weekends and it would be really cool. Sort of a Studio 54 meets CBGBs vibe.
  6. Become A Fashion Photographer
    I would throw money into buying all the equipment I need and then figure out how to become a fashion photographer. I have the talent, I just am very, very, very poor and if that changed in a big way then I would make myself known in the fashion industry.

    None of this, of course, is ever going to happen. It’s just a daydream. I suppose if I sold my novel and it was A HUGE SUCCESS then some of the above might, eventually happen. But I wouldn’t count on it.

    For the time being, at least, I’m reasonably content living in oblivion.

Julia Fox Is An ‘It Girl’ Without A Publication To Obsess About Her

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is a testament to where things are right now with American pop culture and media that Julia Fox is out there, being a walking meme…and there’s not really any one blog or magazine (or even podcast) that I associate with her rise.

I mean, back in the day, there was Gawker and Julia Allison. That was an interesting dynamic that was a lot of fun to see unfold. She was young and dumb and Gawker enjoyed documenting her hot girl silliness.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that Julia Fox is one of a number of post-pandemic things that are part of the general “vibe shift” that is occurring in America at the moment.

And, in a different world — one where I had, like, friends and stuff — I would try to start a blog or a podcast that would do what the old Gawker did with Julia Allison. But, in a sense, I think that says more about my lost, squandered youth than anything else.

I just love the process of starting a new media outlet, however small, and it would be so much fun to start a new blog or podcast that hoped to not only document Julia Fox’s ever twitch, but also follow in the snarky tradition of Spy, Late Night With David Letterman and, of course, Gawker.

But it’s not to be.

Even if I managed to pull it off, it couldn’t be a blog, it would have to be a podcast. That’s where all the buzz and energy is these days. I can go months without looking at any media outlet other than Twitter and YouTube. And, I suspect, millions of other people are the same way.

I look at New York Magazine’s blog or the Undead Gawker’s blog and…it’s all very underwhelming. Meh. So what. Give me something hyper modern that talks about all the interesting, cool cultural developments in post-pandemic America.

Sadly, I doubt it will ever happen.