When Gawker Media began retooling the layouts of its collection of blogs in beta form earlier this year, it wasn’t hard to see what they were up to. At the time, I called it “a massive redesign that will render its collection of eight or so blogs as retooled destination sites” with top stories anchored to a landing page optimized for viewing on devices like the iPad. (Disclosure: I cover tennis for Deadspin, Gawker Media’s sports blog.)
Well, the redesign nearly complete, with a rollout planned over the next couple of months.
On Tuesday, Gawker Media blogfather Nick Denton explained why he decided to make the change -- in a 3,200-plus word post entitled, “Why Gawker is moving beyond the blog.” In short, Denton's reasoning: while he once viewed his collection of blogs like a Condé Nast, albeit with a distinct, snarky tone, he’s now looking at them like a television network -- and hoping advertisers will buy time next to certain “programs” or posts. And it’s a move that apparently led to the exodus of two of Denton’s top ad sales henchmen.
“The 2011 template represents the most significant change in the Gawker model since the launch of Gizmodo and Gawker in 2002,” Denton wrote. “It represents an evolution of the very blog form that has transformed online media over the last eight years. The Internet, television and magazines are merging; and the optimal strategy will assemble the best from each medium.
“No matter whether the visitor keys in the site address or arrives from the side by a link on Facebook or elsewhere,” Denton continued, “he or she will be greeted not just by a story but by an index of other recent items […] In place of the original content column: one visually appealing "splash" story, typically built around compelling video or other widescreen imagery and run in full. At its best, a splash will match in visual impact the cover of a magazine or a European tabloid newspaper; and exceed it because the front-page image can actually move. Outside observers will note that this layout represents some convergence of blog, magazine and television.”
So why the change? Denton gives seven reasons. The first: he says the company has rediscovered “the power of the scoop.”
Gawker blogs once consisted almost entirely of remixes of other organizations' news — with an added dash of commentary or knee-jerk snark. There wasn't that much difference between the day's worst and best-performing posts; the volume was lower and more manageable; the audiences were small, homogeneous and passionate. The blog column worked as long as one assumed that items were indistinguishable and the core readers would scan everything. It does no longer.
One law of media competition applies as strongly to web properties as it did to their predecessors: scoops drive audience growth. Gawker Media experienced that rule, painfully, as Harvey Levin's TMZ eclipsed our overly bloggy Hollywood site, Defamer.
