Last week’s Gawker story allegedly outing a high-profile media executive that triggered widespread condemnation and was subsequently pulled (which in turn led to the resignation of two editors) has led founder Nick Denton to do some soul searching for his gossip news site and the wider Gawker Media company.
Denton is thus banking on a “reboot” of the flagship site next week (coinciding with the company’s move into a new office space on 114 Fifth Ave.) to help rebrand the Gawker image.
“We produce a lot of drama. And sometimes, we become the story,” said Denton in an interview with Digiday. “We don’t want Gawker.com to be limited by the needs of the company. And there is a strong argument for a company name that is not the same as Gawker.com.”
At a staff meeting yesterday, Denton also promised the new site would be “nicer”… but only slightly.
According to a staffer in attendance, Denton initially said that the new version of the site should be “20 percent nicer” than the old one. Perhaps finding this too ambitious, he later downgraded his expectations, telling the staff that the new version of the site should be “10 to 15 percent” nicer than the old one.
Denton has said last week’s controversial story cost the company $20 million in annual revenue.
In related news, Rich Juzwiak, a Gawker writer who we’ve covered on the site before, recently sat down with HuffPost voices to discuss the behind-the-scenes drama at the company (“we’re just in a total meltdown”) and his problems with the original outing article.
Check out his sit down below:
