The business of blogging vs. the hype of blogging
Will the real Nick Denton please make himself known?
On the heels of The New York Times "newspaper of record" piece today by David Carr, presenting a "colorful” spin on Denton’s restructuring of his Gawker Media properties (see my “Batten down”: Denton and Dowd wary of invading bloggers”) a copy of Denton’s official announcement of the changes at Gawker Media is available at The Huffington Post.
In stark contrast to Carr’s glib take on Denton, which paints a portrait of a condescending, self-important man, the announcement penned by Denton is a straight-forward, professional take on the need to adapt to the ever changing blogging business. Here are highlights:
First, advertising is a fickle thing. Particularly the entertainment advertising upon which so many websites depend. A change in the advertising industry's conventional wisdom, cutbacks by the studios it wouldn't take much to prick the current exuberance…
Second, operational costs are increasing. For editorial talent, we now pay within the range of mainstream media. Technology expenses are growing even faster. The open-source publishing systems, upon which most weblogs depend, cannot handle larger and more sophisticated sites. The expansion of internet media is inflating costs for services such as ad-serving…
Third, it's easy enough to start a site; increasingly tough to attract attention. Readers tend to give new Gawker sites an initial look at the very least, and we do cross-promote. But each site ultimately stands alone, and succeeds on the uniqueness of its proposition and the quality of the items. There are no sure things.
