Gawker Offers Full-Time Employee Status To Bloggers

by Glynnis MacNicol | 7:03 pm, November 30th, 2009

» 2 comments

nick_denton We’ve noted a few times in passing on this blog that it sometimes feels like the Gawker websites are determining how media will look online going forward. But today it looks like Gawker is taking one step closer to the mainstream, or at least how the mainstream used to look.

Earlier today The Awl reported that Gawker had decided to give employees at the company’s multiple blogs the option between going full-time or staying as contract workers — most of the bloggers who currently work what can be considered full-time hours are currently paid as contract workers.

Paying employees who put in full-time hours as contract workers is fairly common practice — increasingly so these days with the economy being what it is, even so some found the timing of this decision interesting. We caught up with Gawker head earlier today who told us that the decision was a practical one.

“Our bloggers were drifting into full-time employment,” Denton told us via chat, “they’d start out intending to use the blog as a platform for magazine freelancing (and eventually a job) and they’d be working at home, but the job is pretty all-consuming.” (Yes it is!) “Also, we wanted to recognize that some of our bloggers were evolving into full-time reporters.”

Moreover, Denton says that if Gawker is interested in getting the best reporters from the print world, many of whom are looking to get out before the ship sinks entirely (John Cook and Irin Carmon recently joined the ranks of Gawker and Jezebel respectively) he has to have something to offer them. “If we’re to hire the best of the print refugees, we have to be able to offer benefits to full-time reporters.”

So there you have it, want paycheck security and a mostly tear-free tax season? Get yourself to the Gawker offices. One can only hope that TimeWarner, Conde Nast, Viacom, and the New York Times take note.

Related:
Gawker Media Goes Legit [The Awl]

Choire Sicha, Gawker, Irin Carmon, John Cook, Nick Denton, The Awl

jimmymaher

Gawker is rapidly decaying, revealing its celebrity-stalking, obscene, unearned wealth-flaunting preoccupations to be a preserved-in-amber Bush era relic.
Gawker media won’t make it to the end of the summer, and the people who work there should unite and quit. Or be powerless and whiney, and ride it out like the kneeling bitches they are.
I also predict, very soon, a tsunami of righteous and vibrating hatred for the ‘let them eat cake’ crowd of trust fund artistes, tastemakers and cultural vampires who have polluted American urban culture since 911 demolition.
The coin is turning, TRUST.
Multivitamins
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

I’ve seen a couple of “Best of the Decade” polls and I don’t know that I’ve seen one with fewer than four Gawker properties listed. He’s built a good little empire and part of the key may be the way, he keeps shaking things up.

With that said, I do get the impression that some West Coast industry cred may have been lost, when Defamer and Valleywag were folded into the parent. And the subtitle says “Gossip from Manhattan and the Beltway to Hollywood to the Valley”, plus if you read through those Thanksgiving horror stories, you’d see that they’re reaching a vast national audience, but I get the feeling that some of the writers didn’t get the memo and may be a little too focused on the New York scene. (I assume Richard Rushfield is in LA, but I kind of hope the rest aren’t all just working in one building, like I believe is the case at Mediabistro)

Still, I’m very active on several Gawker sites and am probably responsible for at least fifty pageviews a day. Obviously I like his product and as someone who “pioneered” other aspects of this web-thing, I can also appreciate their constant evolution, as they lead the rest of us toward a more profitable blogosphere.

&/kiss-ass>