This is kind of moot now, but I suppose that there is still a little bit of a window of opportunity for someone to create a Gawker Media-like podcasting network. Instead of a blog, you would have a lot of podcasts — two a day, five days a week.
You would have morning and afternoon / evening podcasts that ran about an hour that would discuss pop culture events. If you really wanted to be a bit edgy, you might stream them live so they could react to events in real-time.
But, like I said, I don’t know if such a thing is even possible now. We’re kind of just on the cusp of moving into a new media environment where everything gets pulled into the maw of AI and XR (VR / AR) and, well, that’s a whole new frontier.
So, I dunno. It is curious that no one did such a thing while there was still time. I think some of it is that the media landscape isn’t one-to-one to the early days of blogs, so there never really was an opportunity for a new Gawker-like media outlet to be birthed in the age of podcasts.
I used to work in technology back in the late 90s until the need to be a professional journalist ate itself out of my psyche. In hindsight, of course, I should have tried to be a novelist or screenwriter back then. But I love writing and at the time I thought I had what it takes to be a journalist.
I *do* have what it takes to be a journalist, but I think it would be a freelancer. Anyway, I left the company I was at where I worked as their “technology manager” and ended up at a small, but very influential community newspaper. The guy who ran the thing was kind of the Lorne Michaels of the Virginia publishing industry.
Of course, I was in a very, very bad place at that point in my life and promptly totally and completely bungled the whole thing, getting fired in short order.
Flash forward, and I’m obsessed with Nick Denton and Gawker Media. I have an obsessive personality — that helps when you’re writing a novel, but can cause problems with anything else.
Anyway, last I saw, Denton had blocked me on Twitter. This really made me wince. I feel so bad. It’s an example of what I call “the Kook tax.” When you’re a kook, sometimes…you screw up. And you have to live with the consequences. Being blocked by someone you otherwise really admire is an example of that.
It seems as though American pop culture is in the midst of some sort of vibe shift. I’ve been listening to Ben Smith, formerly of BuzzFeed, go on his podcast book tour and I’ve noticed a few things from listening to all of his conversations asking him questions from different directions.
Smith makes it clear that he thinks we’re kind of between media eras at the moment. The thing he kept saying that caught my attention is that people have returned to reading The Drudge Report to “know what’s going on.”
I find that comment intriguing.
Before I continue, let me be clear that months go by before I actually go to a Website and read content. I get all of my information passively via Twitter or through reading the headlines of various email lists I’m subscribed to. And, what’s more, it’s clear that it’s very possible that generative AI is about to revolutionize the EVERYTHING, including journalism.
And, yet, there’s a little part of me that wonders if we’re overdue for a site that would have the personality of The Drudge Report — and serve a similar purpose — but would have a more modern and mass sensibility.
My vision of this site would be something in the tradition of Spy Magazine, Late Night With David Letterman and Gawker. It seems as though if you came out of the gate swinging with a unique, interesting take on the days news that was more than just links that you might — MIGHT — be able to recreate the magic of the snarky 2002-2004 era of the Web.
But it would have to be updated for modern audience expectations. You would have to have not just a blog you updated throughout the day, but a podcast or two as well. The window of opportunity for this venture is pretty small and closing fast because, well, luz, who knows how fast AI developments are going to go in the near term.
And you would have to have the resources to pull this off. So, it’s not like I could just do it on my own, no matter how much I am so delusional to try (if I had the resources to do so.)
But for the rise of AI and the metaverse, I would propose that conditions are there for a Gawker-like blog that was really aggressive in being a place where people would visit when they woke up — or got to work — to know What’s Going On.
And, yet, just as we’re overdue for a third wave of punk….I think my hunch while correct on paper just doesn’t make any business sense. The Web is mature. Apps are mature. AI and the metaverse are zooming towards us at an alarming rate.
So, lulz. My little dream is essentially 20 years too late. I need to go back t omy novel.
They say never met your heroes and it’s pretty clear that I’m never going to meet Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media. I’m blocked by Denton on Twitter and I’m completely mortified by the fact. But, alas, I have to admit that he probably has a legitimate reason to do so.
There was a moment in my life when I was pretty obsessed with not just Mr. Denton but Gawker Media. That moment in time is long gone, but the consequences of me pinging Denton all the time on Twitter remains. This situation reminds me of how there was a very influential community publisher who gave me a chance during a dark period in my life…only to realize that I was completely bonkers.
And, yet, at the same time I feel I can only feel so bad about this situation. Denton has a strong reputation as something of a journalistic mentor to young reporters in New York City and if there’s one thing I’m not good at, it’s being mentored by someone.
Fuck that.
Any mentoring of someone involves a certain level of manipulation. And so not only am I too old to be mentored by, I hate being manipulated for any reason.
So, lulz. I suppose if I write a breakout hit novel and I get to be a smug Twitter liberal, maybe I’ll meet Denton at a cocktail party and convince him to unblock me.
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.
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.
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.
It’s not one to one, but as a rule of thumb, the podcasting space is around the same level of development as blogging was around 2003. If I have my chronically correctly, I think Gawker Media was founded around 2002 – 2003.
Anyway, the point is — podcasting is still somewhat under developed. There is still room for a blow out podcast network to blow up out of nowhere. There are a few really powerful podcast networks floating around, but there remains a bit of excitement in the podcasting sphere.
There is a window of opportunity for something cool to happen. I doubt anyone will do anything about it, though.
It definitely seems as though the primordial goo is out there in the media world for a new media outlet to rush out of the void. As I’ve said before, given that all other media is mature, it would make a lot of sense if it was some sort of podcasting network.
Here’s out I would roll it out. And, let me be clear, I’m just following the general way that the old Gawker Media was rolled out back in the day.
NYC (snarky coverage of the city, publishing, etc) Washington (sort of a snarkier version of Pod Save America) LA (Hollywood, etc) Silicon Valley (A snarkier version of the “All In” Podcast) Sports (Something similar to Barstool)
If I did any of this, each one of these podcasts would come out at least once a day, probably in the mornings and would be at least 30 minutes long, if not an hour.
Anyway. No one listens to me and no one cares. It’s just annoying that there is this opportunity and no one will do anything with it.
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