Earlier today, Gawker broke the news that Brian Williams thought Lana Del Rey had “one of the worst outings in SNL history” (not a huge news story but what do you expect on a national holiday?). How did they get this quote? Well, it turns out it was from a private email Williams sent to Gawker head honcho Nick Denton. Gawker posted Williams’ Del Rey critique along with some choice quotes about how often he checks the site’s “shit” on his iPad. Unsurprisingly, NBC PR wasn’t thrilled to see the message hit the front page.

On the bright side, Keith Olbermann is probably getting more headlines in the past week than in his entire time at Current TV (and possibly some of his MSNBC time as well). On the downside, most of them haven’t been great headlines. Following The New York Times‘ reports that there were tensions between the anchor and his new home, Gawker has posted a blistering slam from someone purporting to be a former employee. Olbermann immediately accused Gawker of being “pwned by a fake source.”

TheLoop21.com‘s Keli Goff capped off Monday’s edition of The Dylan Ratigan Show with a “Daily Rant” about the state of internet criticism, both via email and comment forums, that nearly caused me to stand up and cheer in my living room. Sending vile comments into the “trash” folder, or deleting them from the comments section, is a barely-noticeable reflex action, but just above that low bar are types of comments that are really irksome. Goff offered some great advice to the cellar-dwellers.

Major changes at the top of Gawker’s masthead are afoot for the next year, as Editor in Chief Remy Stern announced today that he would be leaving the site. Stepping into his shoes will be longtime Deadspin editor in chief AJ Daulerio. The New York Times reports that changes take place at the end of the year, though Stern called today his last day on the job.

It looks like today’s going to be a big day over on Wall Street. Not only have labor groups like the Transit Worker’s Union voted to support the protest, now gossip site Gawker has posted a pretty huge rumor; Radiohead will be performing for the protesters today.

In an attention-getting game of journalistic Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Gawker‘s John Cook is reporting that The New York Times might be working on a report that President Obama is depressed. Citing a “source inside the Times,” Cook offers a preemptive critique of such a report, and leaves open the possibility that the end product could be watered down from that clinical premise.

Either way, the President sure looks like he’s having fun these days.

Earlier today Gawker published the much ballyhooed “bombshell” story that Nick Denton had previously alluded to as the supposed motivation behind what appeared to be a recent spate of attacks made by Fox News outlets towards Gawker. The story, reported by John Cook, alleges that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly may have sought a police investigation into a detective who had is alleged to have had a relationship with O’Reilly’s wife.

Fox & Friends‘ Steve Doocy hosted BreitbartTV Editor-in-Chief Larry O’Connor this morning to discuss reports of several popular websites that are now, supposedly, “dead or dying.” The real target here, though, was obviously Gawker, who Fox says has lost 75% of its traffic since last year. You can almost audibly hear the axes grinding, as Fox extracts some payback for Gawker’s unflattering coverage of Fox News, and O’Connor blames the whole thing on liberal hoity-toitiness. Gawker’s Nick Denton immediately pushed back against the story.

As the saying goes, dying is easy, comedy is hard, but combining comedy with a sports blog can be downright murder. On the heels of last year’s disastrous Comedy Week live-chat with Sarah Silverman, Gawker sports blog Deadspin is giving it another shot. Despite famously blowing their first shot with Silverman, Deadspin’s editors decided to invite the edgy comic back for another try. Silverman’s response included some rather emphatic dietary advice.

Today, a flight attendant filed lawsuit against Gawker Media for a post (later retracted) that guessed that she may be the mistress of Arnold Schwarzenegger that fathered his illegitimate child. This afternoon on Fox News (a network that’s never had the best relationship with Gawker), the panelists of The Five had quite a bit to say about the website.

Yesterday, we told you that Gawker and its investigative report John Cook were preparing a civil suit against New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in an effort to obtain records that he had met with Fox News head Roger Ailes on September 11th of last year. Cook believes Ailes has a direct hand in GOP politics and may have encouraged Christie to try and seek the Republican nomination for president. The American Civil Liberties Union decided to help the website in its legal pursuits, filing the suit on behalf of Gawker Entertainment LLC.

Now, however, it seems that the organization is having a change of heart.

Gawker and its resident investigative reporter John Cook are planning to file a civil suit today against Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as part of the site’s investigation into whether Christie communicated with Fox News president Roger Ailes… and whether Ailes has a direct hand in politics.

Gawker’s investigation was inspired by New York magazine’s recent, much-publicized profile on Ailes, which noted that the chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group called Christie to encouraged him to campaign in 2012.

If you like watching real estate shows–and love (or hate) Glenn Beck, then this is for you: a “video tour” of Beck’s new digs in Dallas. Yes, yay! From the looks of the video uncovered by Gawker, the place seems nice enough, though hardly over the top. It’s got a wine fridge and stainless steel appliances, a bunch of windows and some nice outdoor space. Lots of room to plot the future of GBTV. We’re told Beck will be leasing the property, but–naturally–he has an option to buy should he absolutely, positively fall in love with the place.

Here’s the description of what Beck’s getting for his money (estimated at about $20,000 a month:

Yesterday, the AP published an extensive piece on “John,” the CIA agent they claim to be the single most important person on the mission to find Osama bin Laden. Needless to say, it took little time for someone to attempt to identify the man, and today Gawker published photos from the White House Twitter feed claiming them to be of the man, courtesy of a leak website that traffics in such information. While there is no confirmation as to the man’s identity, someone may have been tossed into al-Qaeda’s cross-hairs today.

Perhaps owing to a classic summer news lull (combined with Casey Anthony Trial fatigue) CNN looked to Gawker for news today. The Situation Room devoted a segment to yesterday’s story on Fox Chief Roger Ailes and some memos unearthed by Gawker’s John Cook. CNN producers sought a statement from Fox News who insisted that a statement would be forthcoming if they ran it unedited. CNN refused to air it “sight unseen,” Mediaite has obtained the full statement that CNN did not run.

Gawker’s investigative reporter, John Cook, recently combed through various documents (as in, 318 pages of memos, letters, outlines and resumes) detailing Fox News president Roger Ailes‘ working relationship to the White House under President Richard Nixon.

Comedian Harry Shearer, who has a fetish of some kind for watching news anchors and reporters as they prepare to go on camera, has posted a clip of ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer as she prepped to anchor World News from tornado-devastated Joplin, MO. The eight-minute video shows Sawyer standing amid the ruins of a neighborhood–it’s cold, with rain and lightning, Sawyer and her crew sheltered by a small tent as soaked and exhausted ABC News folk set shots, lights, and try to communicate with producers in New York as the network prepares to tell the country a massive, emotional story.

In what is positioning itself to be the next great he said/she said of Summer 2011, Glenn Beck is railing against what he described as a cluster of vile liberal New Yorkers who spilled wine on his wife and otherwise made his family uncomfortable and a film screening in Bryant Park. But after Beck’s account went live yesterday, a witness claiming to be friends with the wine spiller sent a letter to New York disputing his claims, and claiming all was peaceful around the Beck family.

“These people were some of the most hateful people I have ever seen,” said a distraught Glenn Beck this morning as he described an altercation he and his family had last night while watching a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps in New York’s Bryant Park. Explaining that a group of people yelled at his family, took pictures of them, and kicked a cup of wine onto his wife, Beck said that his security team feels that, had he reacted poorly, things might have “gone off.”

In the usual absence of any real, meaty (not a pun, thank you) political stories each summer, it’s usually something completely absurd, wild and/or scandalous that captures the attention of the media and the general public. Summer of ’11 has, so far, been a Summer of Weiner. The so-called “Weinergate” scandal has been the gift that keeps on giving, as far as many media outlets have been concerned, and it’s interesting to see how each has managed to put its own spin on the story. Let’s take a look at how they (and, yes, we) managed it, shall we?

On CNN’s Reliable Sources, the discussion over Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s Twitter photo was front and center. The most startling part of the conversation came however when host Howard Kurtz asked Gawker reporter Maureen O’Connor whether her site has “a big advantage covering this story in a way the mainstream media can’t, starting with the language that you can use,” which strangely predicted what was about to come next.

We get that a lot, actually. Gawker‘s Jeff Neumann took a shot at Mediaite Thursday morning over the length and girt of our coverage of “Weinergate,” noting that “other stuff is happening that might be considered so newsworthy,” and laying the blame at the feet of Mediaite founder and publisher Dan Abrams. While we’re glad [...]

Good news for Aol competitor Yahoo: according to an email by Brian Robinson, the senior director of Yahoo Media Network strategies and insights, the traffic experienced by Yahoo blogs over the past few months tops that of the Huffington Post and Gawker.

With the Sony Playstation Network hack being called by some the largest case of personal information theft ever, another high profile case is starting to seem even bigger than previously thought. Last week, news broke that hackers stole personal information of 250,000 potential contestants from Fox’s upcoming American remake of The X-Factor. Now, it seems the group also stole more information as they’ve leaked a database of around 300 Fox Broadcasting employees and associates.

In a big article on the front page, Gawker has found information that they claim proves that Fox News chief Roger Ailes is a “paranoid maniac.” And all they had to do to get it was use the New York Freedom of Information Law to go through the police records in the small town where he lives, root around for all the times he’s mentioned, and then find out why police went to his house! It’s easy! It reminds me of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein seminal month-long investigation to prove that March had somehow transformed into April.