Tag: Gawker.com

We Need A New Gawker

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Reading Ben Smith’s book “Traffic” has really riled me up on a daydreaming basis. It seems like with the rise of Xinnals that the time is ripe for a online publication that would follow in the footsteps of the 80s Spy Magazine and the early aughts Gawker.

Something snarky that would take the “cool kids” of media, culture and entertainment down a notch every once in a while.

And, yet, there are a lot — A LOT — of problems with this idea.

One is, lulz, something like a Gawker is quaint and moot in the age of AI. We may all be talking to our Digital Personal Assistant in the metaverse using our Apple Vision Pros and the whole idea of “reading” will be cast aside like cursive.

So, I think this is it. We’re never going to get punk back. We’re never going to have another a late night TV talkshow host who is like a young David Letterman and we’re never going to have another Spy or Gawker.


The economics just aren’t there.

I can tell you one thing, though, if I had the means to at least attempt a startup that was meant to follow in the footsteps of Spy and Gawker, I would do it. But it wouldn’t be as much fun as Nick Denton back in the day, though, cause I would be 20 years older — or more — doing it.

I hate being old.

The Vision Thing: My Pitch For A ‘Political Gawker’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A lot time ago, Ana Marie Cox ran Wonkettte. It was a sister blog to Gawker in NYC. It was really fun and was known for its coverage of one particularly sordid Capitol Hill sex imbroglio.

Anyhoo, that was a lot time ago. Wonkette was sold and the last time I checked it was so over the top in its political coverage as to be something of a more serious version of The Onion. Gawker, meanwhile, died from hubris. Then came back. Then died. And now is back in a undead form

I’m completely consumed by this blog’s Webstats and, as such, I’ve noticed a minor uptick in traffic for one specific reason — a lot of other people besides me have our looming autocracy or civil war existential choice on the brain. To me, it seems obvious that there is a sweet spot out there in the aether for a blog that would sort of be Wonkette-Gawker-Spy in nature.

It would take both seriously and literally Trump and the entire shit show that is the modern MAGA New Right. People like Jesse Kelly and his “Welcome To The New Right” catch phrase would be our meat and potatoes. We would attack that fucker — and people like him — with all the snark at our deposal. And this new blog would wallow in pacing out what is going to happen in the late 2024 – early 2025 timeframe in regards to autocracy or civil war.

I say “we” only as a rhetorical device. I have tried — and failed — repeatedly to start various new blogs over the years (usually about 1 a year in August). And I’m just not going down that route again. I really — REALLY want to wrap up four novels sooner rather than later and I’m just not going to divert my attention away from that massive project.

But.

If I could get someone with some business sense to join forces with me, I could be convinced to narrow the amount of time I work on those four novels. I have the experience and vision to build the editorial side of a “political Gawker” up from the ground up. I don’t know shit about the business side and would only throw myself into such an endeavor if I could find someone with the money and business sense (and shared political vision) to help me out with the basics of starting such a blog.

And, yet, I’m realistic. I don’t live in a big city and all this writing about this subject is hence very moot. I would love to write for the new, undead Gawker in some capacity, but I don’t live in NYC and, lulz.

I keep telling myself I’m going to stop writing about this particular dream, then I turn around and write about it some more. I think this summer dream will burn itself out by late August. If I can just get a few URL hits from NYC or LA that would be enough to make all this verbiage entertaining.

I have a lot of experience in writing in the Gawker-style (see below) and it’s kind of a shame that just because I have no friends and no one likes me that I can’t find someone, anyone, to be my business partner for something that would probably be quite lucrative and influential.

ROKing Sinchon with Jenny 8

Jennifer 8. Lee likes food.

A lot.

Recently, I hung out with the New York Times reporter and her friend Tomoko Hosaka of the Wall Street Journal here in Seoul.

The plan was for her to go to a jimjilbang with Annie Shapiro and ms. tiff, but that didn’t work out. Tomoko wanted to go to eat “Korean barbeque” and since Annie and Tiff are veggies, they were left out. This story was supposed to be about Annie and Tiff taking Jenny to a jimjilbang and getting all nekkid – now that would have been funny – but there are no happy endings in Korea so you get this write-up instead. I took a picture of the two ladies at the restaurant, but they wouldn’t let me use it. I generally think taking pictures of yourself with famous people is kind of lame, so you, gentle reader, will just have to settle for a picture of the fortune cookie I was given. If Annie and Tiff had done the story, maybe the situation would be different.

On the way to the subway, Jenny kept stopping to eat stuff from street vendors. I had to DJ that Friday night and we had to go all the way across town, so I was starting to stress out a little bit.

Again and again, she would ask me what this or that food was offered at street vendors as we headed towards the subway station. I had no clue. “I eat because I have to, not because I want to,” I told her finally. What else could I say? I

The fact that I met her is a testament not only to this wacky Internet age that we live in, but how being an expatriate in a place like Korea has its quirky advantages.

I met Jenny ’cause I, well, picked on her middle name online. When I first came to Korea I had way too much drunken spare time on my hands, so I often found myself in bouts of soju-fueled writing binges.

“I can not stress enough how odd it is that Jennifer Lee uses an ‘8’ for her middle name. It’s just totally unheard of. It’s like one of the

columns of Western civilization has suddenly become just a little unstable,” I once wrote. “I don’t care that her name really is ‘Jennifer 8. Lee.’ In

years gone by, an editor would have taken one look at it, eyed the flask of Jack Daniels in his desk drawer then said, ‘Look, kid, I don’t care how

lucky the damn number is, you’re going by ‘Jennifer Lee‘ from now on.'”

Her middle name is a lucky number in Chinese culture. How exactly she was able to keep it in her byline eludes me. The fact that she graduated from Harvard University may have something to do with it.

When this actual famous reporter out of the blue contacted me, it both made me very happy and very nervous. She contacted me because she had read some of the shit I had written about her online and she needed some help finding Chinese restaurants in Korea. She’s on sabbatical from the Times to write a book on, like, the best Chinese restaurants in the world or some such. The first time she contacted me, I suddenly felt kinda bad about all the pointless mental masturbation I expended on her.

It’s funny how you can talk shit about a famous person online, but when you actually meet them you treat them like you would anyone else. While she’s no Maureen Dowd, in some media circles, Jennifer 8. Lee is, in fact, “famous” or “notorious.” For people who read Gawker.com, Jenny is shorthand for a reporter who writes seemingly pointless trend stories about things like “man dates.” She had the odd habit of using the phrase, “people of my generation” in a very authoritative tone, like she literally was speaking for everyone her age. “Jenny, you’re younger than I am,” I said teasingly at least once over galbi.

She actually has a rather bubbly, cute personality. My lone meeting with her did leave some1thing of a mystery in my mind — how is it that someone who, in the words of one article “causes $148,000 in damage to her Washington condo” actually be quite nerdy? What the heck does she do? She is obviously an extremely smart woman and from the little mischievous glint in her eye I can see how she probably loves to host a great party. But like all the great reporters I’ve known, she didn’t seem like much of a extrovert. She was quiet and curious about everything.

I picked her up at the Ritz Carlton. When I met her, she handed me a fortune cookie, while I handed her a copy of ROKon. “Fortune cookies are actually originally from Japan, not China,” Jenny said. It was a huge fortune cookie. It looked like a piece of found art. “I’ll either eat it when I’m drunk or crush it when I’m drunk,” I quipped.

I took the women to Sinchon to my favorite Korean restaurant. I go there so much that I’m like a part of the family. Tomoko seemed a bit uneasy hanging out with little old me, while Jenny was a good sport. I wanted to get Tomoko drunk to loosen her up a bit, but she had an early morning date with the DMZ.

At one point, I felt kinda bad for Tomoko. She’s a fairly important journalist in her own right, and all I did was talk to Jenny.

“I know you went to Harvard, Jenny,” I said invoking the “H-bomb” without meaning to, “But where did you go, Tomoko?”

“Northwestern,” she said with just a touch forlornly.

We talked a long time. I talked up ROKon, while the ladies were more interested in the food than anything I had to say. They’re an intense bunch, those two. I told them about knowing another Wall Street Journal reporter, Lina, but neither of them knew her. They were perplexed that they didn’t know her ’cause she has some connection to the Washington Post. Jenny acted like if there was an Asian who worked in any capacity at the Post, she would know her.

I had of vision of taking Jenny to Nori People and being able to see her shake what her momma gave her to my musical selections, but it was not to be. Jenny couldn’t stay. I did take Tomoko and Jenny there just to show it to her. “Oh, this is fun,” she said. You have to give those New York Times reporters credit, they are an observant bunch.

They left a lot sooner than I’d liked. As I said, I had all these grand plans to show them what a fun time we ROKon staffers were. Jenny promised to show me around New York City if I ever happened to end up there. The more I look at that fortune cookie, though, the more it looks like something that rhymes with “Mulva.”

By SHELTON BUMGARNER

ROKon Magazine Editor

Watch Me Channel Lester Bangs: Undead Gawker Is Boring


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m day drinking rye on my way to working fleshing out the outline of the first of four novels I’m planning, so think of this as me channeling Lester Bangs while I psyche myself up to my attention to the main event.

In short, I’m drunk and writing.

Anyway, the new Gawker is boring. It has an element of spunk to it, and, yet, not one of the article headlines I glanced out just a moment ago was enough to make me sit up and take notice. Sometimes, you need to be ornery. We live in such surreal times that if you had the backing to start a new blog like the Undead Gawker, I would pull out the stops.

Find a few young obsessives — or maybe an old obsessive like me? — and tell them to rant. They would get traffic through marketing and buzz. Now, here’s what I would do if I was in charge Undead Gawker. I would very carefully study the site’s Webstats and try to glean what, specifically was catching the most people’s interest then I would attack that subject with the strangest, snarkiest hot takes I could possibly pull out of my ass.

You know what Undead Gawker reminds me of right now?

Radar Online.

Give me a blog format, a jug of rye, access to Undead Gawker’s webstats and an expectation of 10 solid posts a day and I could put that site on the map. I know what makes Twitter liberals tick. I know their internal media narrative. I can make bankshot references to cultural touchstones that every Twitter power user knows.

The point is: fucking hire me, Undead Gawker.

Ugh.

Anyway, this rye tastes nice and the novels I’m supposed to be working on are looking more and more attractive.

Undead Gawker Leaves Me Very Frustrated


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ugh. Seeing undead Gawker is beginning to eat away at me because I know I could really help them out, given the opportunity. What I feel like doing is obsessively writing about the site until they take notice and let me write for them in some capacity.

I would love to cover the Civil War Or Autocracy Beat.

And, yet, I don’t know. I do have four novels to develop and write. It seems like a huge waste of time. If I were to go the “Leave Britany alone” route, it would be just because my frustration got the best of me.

The point is — now that we’re (maybe?) coming out of the Rona era, there may be a first mover advantage for a blog to cover this new era we are entering. I’m the perfect person to start it, but only in the context of having a business partner. Given I’m apparently the most ghostable person on the planet, I need to just buckle down with the novels.

The thing I want — to either work for Gawker or found my own Gawker-like site, just isn’t going to happen. Or, it will only happen if something rather spectacular happens, like I win the lottery or something.

So, lulz, I need to focus on the four novels I’m developing and writing.

A Modest Proposal For A New Blog


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that we have had 24 hours to look at the soft-reboot of Gawker, and it’s obvious that my personal media tastes have moved on from the Gawker of yore. Besides my gripe about the new Gawker’s layout (it’s not really a blog), I feel kind of sad that none of the posts are as spicy-hot as the old Gawker’s. The whole thing is well done and interesting, but…not really viral-worthy.

This could change, of course, but it got me thinking.

Most of the traffic for this blog is coming from searches of people obviously worried about an impending civil war in the United States. My gut tells me that if I could find someone with some business savvy (read, money) and I wrote actual journalistic articles that were laser focused on pondering what appears to be our never-ending march towards the choice of autocracy or civil war (probably around January 2025) that you would have a recipe for some sort of success.

I could do it, but I have no money and no friends.

You get people hooked by long, interesting posts about how this or that recent event seems to indicate we’re closer to autocracy or civil war, and keep them hooked with weird articles like, “Is Tik-Tok Reading Your Mind?” and “Is Taylor Swift A Virgin?”

In the past, this would be the point when I would get frustrated, buy a URL and struggle for a few days to make this dream a reality. But, lulz, I four novels to work on.

So, I don’t know, maybe someone contact me about this? Or, hell, someone else can start this type of blog so I can have something to read?

The New Gawker Is Great, It’s Just Missing One Thing: ME


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The original Gawker got me through a very dark time in my life so I’ve always had a sentimental attachment to the site. The site has come back and it seems fine. I could see myself reading it on a regular basis. I struggle to see how they’re going to differentiate themselves from, say, New York Magazine though.

One way they could do that is to hire me!

I have a very old-Gawker sensibility. I like to look into weird concepts in weird ways for weird reasons. I did a great job with ROKon Magazine in Seoul for the the few months it existed in late 2006 to early 2007.

And I know the beat I could cover for them — the civil war or autocracy beat. Most of my writing on the subject to date has been rather vague for no other reason than I’ve just been letting off steam. But just the barest amount of money to write on the subject would cause me to throw myself into producing actual journalistic articles on the subject.

Julia Allison, the icon of the Old Gawker.

I would also love to get paid to do an actual investigation into my lingering fears that Tik-Tok is reading our minds. That would be a lot of fun to poke around in a silly, semi-serious manner.

One big concern I have is, are Websites moot? I know for me, at least, I get almost all news passively off of Twitter. That’s it — if there’s news, I get it form Twitter. For the New Gawker to work, it would really need to be bonkers and interesting — two things I definitely bring to the table. (Wink.)

Anyway, I wish them luck, no matter what. I have a novel or four to work on, so I’m not holding my breath that they’ll listen to — or care about — the voice mail I left them tonight about this very thing.

What I bring to the table.

Goodbye To All That: Maybe It’s Time To Let Gawker Go


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I keep hearing rumblings that Gawker is coming back in some form. While I’m all for something like Gawker coming back, I don’t know if bringing the Gawker brand itself back is all that great an idea. It’s too loaded. Any new version of the site would be judged by the old version.

Also, the Web is a lot different than it was nearly 20 years ago when Gawker first came out. The Web is now a mature medium. It’s almost impossible to organically grow a brand. A lot of the youthful vigor that helped grow Websites back in the day now is found on video services like Tik-Tok.

As such, I think literally bringing Gawker back may be a bit misguided. I would love to be involved in founding a new site similar to Gawker. I could do a really good job. I love shit like that.

But no one listens to me. I will note, in passing, how strange it is that the audience has moved on from the snarky, heady days of 2003-2004. There’s a fundimental change in audience tastes that I struggle to understand.

Post-Rona Media: Idle Rambling About The Need For A Successor To Gawker


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because of all my obsessive ranting about Gawker over the years, its founder Nick Denton has blocked me on Twitter. I have to say that one kind of hurts — even if, from his perspective, I can see I kinda deserve it.

Now, let me be clear — I’m working on a novel (which is going well, thank you) and so this is just me letting off some steam. Absolutely no one, but NO ONE, listens to me. I really am, for the time being, just talking to myself on this blog. I’m a complete and total nobody. But occasionally, I like to think, I do write something interesting on this blog.

And I know I’m writing some pretty interesting things in the novel I’m writing. Some of them are pretty thought provoking, in fact.

Regardless, I’m old enough now to have some perspective .Looking back on what I’ve experienced, it definitely seems as though occasionally a New Era pops up that changes things in a big way. Thinking back, it seems as though there were big shifts in mass perception just after Watergate and in the 1991-1992 era.

It seems logical to me that…maybe?…the fact that both Trumplandia and Rona are set to end at just about the same time might be enough to reset things? A New Modern era? Young people will reference THIS as “the modern” going forward?

A lot depends on the economy and how stable things are on an economic front. Though, of course, you could say that the next four years may be the last gasp of America as a liberal democracy, so, as such, we’re ripe for some Weimar Republic levels of creativity in a short burst before ICE agents begin to patrol Broadway looking for “non-American themes and ideas.”

I wish I was joking.

But the point is — where’s our new Gawker? It would be fun to have a new Gawker-like site that would follow in the traditions of Late Night with David Letterman, Spy Magazine and Gawker. I know what’s going on — the Internet is just as mature as the rest of media, so the start up costs for a Gawker-like site would be staggering.

The dynamic just isn’t there for a site to grow organically anymore.

As such, I think we’re in for just more of the same. The economics of the infotainment industry as such that we’re just going to have bland everything from here on out.

I’m doing my part to create something fun and different with the novel I’m working on, but it just takes time. Be patient.