Seemingly incensed that Andrea Tantaros had labeled the site as “left-wing,” Bob Beckel was the most vocal in his attacks. After Greg Gutfeld claimed that everyone he knew who worked there was “miserable,” Beckel said he wasn’t surprised, asking how they could “sleep at night.”

He wasn’t just defending his network, but his co-host as well. Beckel pointed out that the website had once posted information about Kimberly Guilfoyle’s residence. For her part, Guilfoyle wasn’t thrilled he even brought it up, prompting Beckel to quickly add that she had since moved.

Watch the clip from Fox News below:

Here’s the specific issue with which Gawker’s tech team is wrestling:

The problem boils down to this: Our layout consists of a 620-pixel content div, inside of which we need two 300-pixel columns for images and ads that can float left and right, with a 20-pixel gutter between them. The problem is this:

When the 20px gutter is there, the image won’t float next to the ad, so if an image appears in the flow next to the advertisement, it’s pushed down below the ad. The designers at Gawker who are working on this are stumped. The only partial solution they’ve found involves creating shims using empty divs, but it’s not a solution we’re happy with.

On the one hand, it’s nice to see a blog reaching out to a community for help, because it shows not only a sense of humility (never underestimate the value of a well-placed admission of failure or realization of a misstep on the internet), but also a sense of value and respect for one’s readership. However, if formerly loyal commenters of blogs like Gawker and iO9 feel like they’ve been cast aside, what incentive do they have to help out at this point? Is this a case of biting the hand that feeds, then asking that hand to… come up with an appropriate end to this metaphor?

So. Any suggestions for getting Gawker out of the gutter?

h/t Lifehacker

The story of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is, by any measure, an enormous story, and with good reason. Any story that includes narratives such as treason, computer hacking, and freedom of the press deserves a ton of attention. Mr. Beck’s coverage, to date, has been opinionated, but also remarkably fair, going so far as to criticize the sexual misconduct charges against Mr. Assange. Earlier this week, however, Beck informed his audience about the “hactivists” who have supported WikiLeaks, a thread in this story which is best explained by someone more familiar with the Internet culture that spawned the “hactivists.” From Cole Stryker at Urlesque:

Glenn Beck recently declared that 5,000 (no idea where that number is coming from) “hacktivists” (lol) are fomenting pinko revolution by hacking into the networks of those corporate entities who would disassociate themselves from Wikileaks.

He quotes Coldblood, that geeky kid who appeared on Canadian TV last week, as a spokesperson for Anonymous. But, as I’ve explained, the 22-year old is no more a spokesman for Anonymous than your teenage son. Anonymous has no spokesman, no leadership, no structure. I would be surprised if a few dozen of them know how to hack anything, let alone 5,000. This is no cabal of Tyler Durdens. It’s not an underground arm of socialist interest groups.

Those unfamiliar with the depths of Internet sub-culture can be forgiven not knowing much about “Anonymous.” To be fair, the anonymous crowd-sourced set of vigilantes responsible for some of the most newsworthy stunts in Internet history is a hard concept to understand. But they’ve garnered well deserved mainstream attention of late because of theire recent attempts to disrupt any entity who is alligned with they see as the wrong side of justice over the WikiLeaks story (Operation Payback). Glenn Beck has taken an admirable whack at trying to explain to his audience something that verges on being inexplicable, though as is often the case, his explanation is almost certain to offend someone, somewhere.

This is a dangerous place to be with these individuals. Comments made by media figures about Anonymous, and their vigilante hacker brethren, should not be made lightly. Recently, Gawker Media’s network of websites received a remarkably embarrassing and potentially disastrous hack, that saw their personal email system, content management system and commenter database all compromised by a group of hackers that call themselves Gnosis. These hackers claim no affiliation with Anonymous, but did share with Mediaite the reasoning behind their hack: what they saw as arrogance towards the hacker community in comments made by Gawker Media’s founder Nick Denton.

This morning, news surfaced of a letter from Anonymous directed towards Mr. Beck regarding his coverage, which is a fascinating portrait of the paradox of being part of such a group. The letter includes “we are not an organization. We have no leaders. We have no official spokesperson,” and yet is signed “Anonymous.” Clearly a healthy dose of skepticism on these sorts of things is warranted, but the tone and nomenclature are consistent with other Anonymous correspondence. Therefore, given that Beck now has received what looks like a note from someone familiar with that world, and that Beck has already made a point of calling them out, one wonders if its just a matter of time before any of the Glenn Beck affiliated web properties (like GlennBeck.com or TheBlaze.com) are suddenly in the same position as Gawker.

The full text of the letter is below, followed by Mr. Beck’s initial report on Operation Payback.

RE: Recent comments concerning Anonymous.

Mr. Beck,

We have no problem with those who criticize us. We understand that freedom of speech includes the right to speak out in criticism of those whom you may not agree with. We have many critics, and we respect their first amendment rights.

However, in your recent comments, it seems that you and/or your editing team have mixed up a few details during your research on us. We at Anonymous wish to set the record straight, so that you and your audience will be better informed about us and our objectives. Hopefully, this will reduce some of the anxiety you may feel towards us in the process.

You see, Mr. Beck, we are not an organization. We have no leaders. We have no official spokesperson. We have no age, race, ethnicity, color, nationality, or gender. Anyone who claims to speak for all of us is, quite frankly, a liar. To be clear, the gentleman known as Coldblood was not sanctioned by anyone but himself to speak on our behalf.

Your attempts to formally link Anonymous to Wikileaks were misguided. We are not formally linked to Mr. Assange, to Wikileaks, or the break-off operation, Openleaks. To reiterate, we are not an organization of any kind.

You spoke of revolution as though it is necessarily a bad thing. Let us remind you that America was founded upon revolution. Furthermore, the world we live in today is the result of numerous revolutions that have occurred throughout human history – many of them being positive, and resulting in advancements for all of humanity.

You seem to imply that we are revolutionaries. We do not object to this – in fact, it pleases us.

Neither Wikieaks nor its founder have been charged with any crime in connection to any of the published leaks. Thus, we at Anonymous see any actions directed at silencing Wikileaks as an assault on our freedom of information and the freedom of those at Wikileaks to publish as they see fit.

Whether young or old, political or apolitical, moderate or hard-liner, the issue of freedom of speech and information affects us all. Please do not aspire to make the Wikileaks issue more divisive than it already is, Mr. Beck.

We embrace everyone from all walks of life, from all corners of the earth, to join us in our quest to protect and further enhance not only our rights to freedom of information and freedom of speech, but all of our human freedoms.

You are welcome to talk to us at anytime. We will answer any further questions you may have. After further dialogue, perhaps then you will see that you and we are not so different. Anonymous can be anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and that includes you and your audience as well, Mr. Beck. We simply wish to see the freedoms of all Americans and all citizens of Earth to be at the very least maintained, and wherever possible, strengthened and enhanced to their fullest extent.

Signed,

Anonymous

In the wake of the attack, Gawker has promised to “[bring] in an independent security firm to improve security across our entire infrastructure. Additionally, we will continue to work with independent auditors to ensure we maintain a reliable level of security, as well as the processes necessary to ensure we maintain a safe environment for our commenters.” However, the attack has alarmed many of its readers, and should be alarming to most people who have transmitted their personal information over the Web. Perhaps even more alarming than the user database hack is the source code leak: Gawker is built on a proprietary, closed-source framework, which its proprietor Nick Denton says ‘underpins his entire empire to this day.’ Blogger Felix Salmon writes that Gawker Media is in the process of trying to transform into a technology company; this is a hard thing to do when your source code is thoroughly compromised.

Mediaite’s sister site Geekosystem got in touch with members of Gnosis and discussed what the attacks meant for Gawker Media, web publishers, and everyone who shares unsecured information on the Internet:

Geekosystem: I’m sure you all have been following today’s media coverage of the hack. What do you think was most misreported or underreported? What haven’t people been talking about enough with respect to the attacks that you think they should be talking about?

Gnosis: That answer is easy. The source code. I just read a post on Fox News that dealt entirely with the release of the database. While this is understandable because your average joe reader might not understand the full implications that comes with releasing a sites source code I feel that it could be targeted a bit more. I expect though that the initial frenzy is to do with the database and that will slowly fade into people researching the source (Or rather I hope that this will happen).

Just to spell it out releasing a sites source code is one of the worst things that could happen – the source that runs the site is now public and this means anyone can view how it works, meaning exploits can be found for the code. What is worse is that with a large code base the site owners cannot simply refactor and change large portions of it, they are stuck and often have no choice but to continue running the public code base until a newer, private version is created which can take a long time. They also have to consider that most of their code, which they worked hard on, is effectively dust-binned. Unless they take the open source route, of course.

As with any story things spin out of control and people add their own opinions to the mix. The only sites that we released information to were Mediaite and TNW, which means that everything else is pure speculation and/or opinion. People are talking about security, which is good, and I think it has brought to light the security issues that face both users and sites, and I hope that Gawker and other sites can learn from the mistakes that led to this.

Geekosystem: You previously mentioned that Gawker used DES [Data Encryption Standard, an outdated hashing algorithm in which only the first eight characters of a password are necessary for login]. What other mistakes do you think that they made that made your attack easier? Nick Denton said today that Gawker Media will be hiring an outside firm to evaluate their properties’ web security; if they hired Gnosis, what would you tell them to change?

Gnosis: They made several mistakes which contributed to their compromise – leaving passwords literally lying around, using the same password for multiple accounts and services (A lot were weed related, perhaps they had been smoking a bit too much and forgot some basic security principles? (GANJA framework anyone?!)). Unfortunately, I am afraid that until Gawker Media *do* hire us we cannot report fully on any of our findings. Sorry Nick!

Read the rest of the interview, in which Gnosis both assesses Gawker system sturdiness and alleges Gawker’s apparent fondness for marijuana, at Geekosystem.

First and foremost, it appears that new Gawker Media passwords are secure, not available to the individual claiming responsibility for the security breach, at least according to Gnosis. As Mediaite reported earlier, when asked why Gawker was being subjected to a cyber-attack, Gnosis cited “arrogance” from management and staff with regard to the hacker community:

We went after Gawker because of their outright arrogance. It took us a few hours to find a way to dump all their source code and a bit longer to find a way into their database.

We found an interesting quote in their Campfire logs:

Hamilton N.: Nick Denton Says Bring It On 4Chan, Right to My Home Address (After
The Jump)

Ryan T.: We Are Not Scared of 4chan Here at 210 Elizabeth St NY NY 10012

I mean if you say things like that, and attack sites like 4chan (Which we are not affiliated to) you must at least have the means to back yourself up. We considered what action we would take, and decided that the Gawkmedia “empire” needs to be brought down a peg or two. Our groups mission? We don’t have one.

We will be releasing the full source code dump along with the database at 9PM GMT today. You are the only outlet we have told the release time.

When asked about further explanation about the specific attacks, Gnosis explained:

We cannot provide any more information as to how the attack was carried out, because this could be used against us.

We have been cracking the database for about 17 hours and have managed to retrieve 273,789 passwords. If our release schedule wasn’t so tight we could get 500,000+. Included in the dump are passwords linked to accounts from Nasa, about every .gov domain you could imagine and hundreds from banks. One can only pray that they do not use the same password everywhere. The actual database size is 1,247,897 rows, which is 80+% of their database.

(Private data redacted)

We have had access to all of their emails for a long time as well as most of their infrastructure powering the site. Gawkmedia has possibly the worst security I have ever seen. It is scary how poor it is. Their servers run horribly outdated kernel versions, their site is filled with numerous exploitable code and their database is publicly accessible.

We will be releasing the full source code to their site as well as the full database dump later today or tomorrow, when we get enough press to stir up the release. We will also be releasing a text file describing Gawkers numerous security failings.

Regards,
~Gnosis

Adding later in a follow up email:

The database is for the media more than anything. Releasing the source code to a site is all very well and will cause a splash, but
only niche users will be interested in viewing it and sharing it, because the average joe won’t really care about Gawkers (rather
interesting) PHP framework. However if we release the source with 1,300,000 emails and with a portion of them cracked it will (We hope) cause a bigger stir.

On an interesting side note there are 2650 users in the database using the password “password” or “querty”. Of these users one is registered under a .gov email address, 3 are from a .mil addres and 52 are from .edu addresses.

Finally, when asked if any future attacks were planned, Gnosis offered the following:

Nope, not right now. They didn’t like their frontpage being defaced with that post, so they have locked down pretty tight. We will still work on it for a while.

We don’t like being lumped with 4chan though, but I guess it was inevitable. People on twitter are saying “4chan’s Gnosis hacked Gawker”.

The email exchange came to us after our first report was published Saturday afternoon and was conducted with an individual using an untraceable email account. Also, Mediaite has shared some relevant information with Gawker sources to confirm the veracity of the hacker’s allegations, which in hindsight, have all been right on the money.

The text of the post reads:

We have discovered various copies of our source code available for download from HERE.
We ask you to NOT download this, as this WILL infringe our copyright.

On the one hand, please know that we at Gawker Media take your information VERY seriously, all user data is protected and looked after in accordance with our policy.

However, we do not believe our data has been compromised, so please relax on that front.

We protect our data with UNIX Standard hash encryption method crypt(3), which is absolutely 100% impossible to crack.

We follow the most stringent, industry standard, methods in order to ensure the integrity and safety of your data. We hope that despite the full disclosure of GANJA, we still hold our iron grip on our data.

Due to the leak of the GANJA framework from within our company, we have entered into the process of complete code review to enhance and enforce our privacy policy.

The link leads to a Pirate Bay page where it appears users are able to download the leaked database of Gawker commenters. A screen cap of that page (the text of which follows):

So, here we are again with a monster release of ownage and data droppage.
Previous attacks against the target were mocked, so we came along and raised the bar a little.
Fuck you gawker, hows this for “script kids”?
Your empire has been compromised, Your servers, Your database’s, Online accounts and source
code have all be ripped to shreds!
You wanted attention, well guess what, You’ve got it now!

Contents:

./database
– Database dump (1.3+ million rows), including cracked passwords.
./source
– Source dump
./gawker_redesign_beta.jpg
– Upcoming redesign
./readme.txt
– Read this for some background info and lots of juicy passwords
./server_list.txt
– List of gawker server kernel versions.

While we have already stated we are not 4chan or anonymous, these quotes amuse us:
Brian M.
The headeline of your post should be “Suck on This, 4Chan”
Maureen O.
I like the call to make today Everybody Write About 4chan Day
Hamilton N.
Nick Denton Says Bring It On 4Chan, Right to My Home Address (After The Jump)
Ryan T.
We Are Not Scared of 4chan Here at 210 Elizabeth St NY NY 10012

– #Gnosis, where is your god now? —

Originally reported by Joe Coscarelli at The Village Voice, an apparently hacked Gizmodo Twitter account announced support for WikiLeaks, but also announced the following message “Gawker.com Gizmodo.com Lifehacker.com hacked, 1.5 Million usernames/emails/passwords taken:

This morning, Matt Brian reported on the alleged security breach for TheNextWeb:

From the information we have been provided, it appears that some of the base infrastructure of the Gawker Media organization has landed in the hands of people completely unrelated to the site or business itself. Though we were initially under the impression that it was the 4chan-founded group of Anonymous we have since been told, via email, that the responsible party has no affiliation with Anonymous or others. In fact, here’s what we’ve seen, in whole:

It has come to our attention that you are reporting about gawker.com being hacked by Anonymous and Operation payback in the war against the wikileaks drama that is currently taking place. While we feel for Wikileaks plight, and encourage everyone to donate and mirror the site, we are not related to Operation Payback or engaged in their activities. We have compromised all their email accounts and databases, and a significant portion of the passwords have been unhashed into plaintext.

To prove the validity of our claims, here is a sample of the database: [redacted]

While we were, of course, skeptical of the information the claims were potentially huge. That said, we did ask for proof and proof was provided via screenshots of information that would typically only be available to a site administrator or owner.

A screengrab of what TheNextWeb claims to be a Campfire group chat sessions of Gawker’s editorial staff:

Mediaite was also contacted by an individual who has remained anonymous and cannot be verified. The source, however, did share examples of what appear to be working pairings of usernames and passwords for users to comment on Gawker Media sites. If this is a real hack, and again, there is no concrete evidence that the entire database has been compromised, it would be a particularly embarrassing security breach for Gawker Media. In fact, it was Gawker’s alleged arrogance that seems to be the motivation for the hack. The anonymous source claims:

We went after Gawker because of their outright arrogance. It took us a few hours to find a way to dump all their source code and a bit longer to find a way into their database.

We found an interesting quote in their Campfire logs:

Hamilton N.: Nick Denton Says Bring It On 4Chan, Right to My Home Address (After
The Jump)

Ryan T.: We Are Not Scared of 4chan Here at 210 Elizabeth St NY NY 10012

I mean if you say things like that, and attack sites like 4chan (Which we are not affiliated to) you must at least have the means to back yourself up. We considered what action we would take, and decided that the Gawkmedia “empire” needs to be brought down a peg or two. Our groups mission? We don’t have one.

We will be releasing the full source code dump along with the database at 9PM GMT today. You are the only outlet we have told the release time.

When contacted by Mediaite, Mr. Kidder reiterated that there was no evidence of any security breach, but that they were still investigating the claims.

Earlier this year, Gawker attracted national media attention and launched an FBI investigation with a report on an iPad security breach which exposed the identities and personal information of 114,000 iPad 3G owners, including Mike Bloomberg, Harvey Weinstein, and Diane Sawyer.

Now, Gawker has been hit with what appears to be a security breach of ten times the magnitude. Given Gawker’s public flaunting of the hacker community that populates 4Chan — with which our source emphasizes the group involved in this particular database hack has no affiliation — combined with Gawker’s at-times schadenfreude-filled celebration of other major media outlets’ failings, this is sure to be a story that gets lots of attention in the coming days and weeks.

Update – Scott Kidder shares with Mediaite the following note to all staff that confirms that their database has in fact been hacked:

Our user databases do indeed appear to have been compromised. The passwords were encrypted. But simple ones may be vulnerable to a brute-force attack. You should change the password on Gawker (GED/commenting system) and on any other sites on which you’ve used the same passwords. Out of an abundance of caution, you should also change your company email password and any passwords that may have appeared in your email messages.

We’re deeply embarrassed by this breach. We should not be in the position of relying on the goodwill of the hackers who identified the weakness in our systems. And, yes, the irony is not lost on us. Lifehacker has tips on how to create strong passwords: http://lifehac.kr/h7jgzQ

As one can see in the screencap below, Gawker appears to be planning a dramatic shift from a traditional, single-stream and cascading blog layout, to one that is a more conventional “site” layout:

In the format above one can see clearly a more prioritized layout, which provides editors the chance to promote a “top story” as well as theoretically provide greater permanence to more popular stories, or those deemed to be of greater importance. The current Gawker layout is more limited in this regard as the vast majority of blog posts only appear chronologically.

Some background: When Gawker acquired CityFile, the stated goal was that Denton saw the need to develop (and own) some more permanent content, different from the ephemeral and somewhat disposable posts that come with their typical coverage (which in fairness, is quite similar in nature to much of which is produced by Mediaite.) Or as Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal wrote at the time:

While CityFile’s readership isn’t enormous, the site boasts a top-notch readership, and a very clever database of over 2144 NYC notables. It’s the type of database we suspect Gawker will be able to get a lot of juice (SEO and otherwise) out of, with a lot of potential for expanding

So it appears that now that the redesign that has “leaked” it may be part of a larger integration of CityFile’s personality-based content. The new beta version of the tag pages seem to fall more in line with the CityFile model and bring to mind HuffPost’s “Big News” pages. Some have surmised that Gawker’s larger strategy is to become a more mainstream and national player, which dovetails with Gawker’s plans to hire a full-time media booker.

Most of the Gawker Media sites appear to have a beta version of their redesign up: Jalopnik, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, and Deadspin. Nothing yet is up for either Jezebel or Fleshbot.
Its worth noting that Denton has a time-honored tradition of sending out press releases disguised as “Internal Memoes” that many love to re-purpose in a fun and clandestine way. So there is a very good chance that this “beta” version of Gawker’s redesign was very much meant to be leaked. Either way, its still very interesting to watch the transformation of an innovative network of sites – even it does appear that their new design reflects a rather traditional layout used by many.

In a fun read that evokes the best writing of snark progenitor Spy, Tate treats his subject in a tough, but fair manner; portraying Tina as one who is very much living in an anachronistic version of New York. You know, like ten years ago, when people had ridiculous amounts of money (but acted stupidly with it), Sex in the City was regarded as pastiche, and people used fax machines to exchange content. No, that is not hyperbole – according to Tate, when in London a staffer prints and faxes all articles published that day on The Daily Beast so that Tina Brown can read her website via fax!

It’s worth reading as written:

Printing the book: Except, and this really is our favorite, there is one crucial role for paper and printers to play in the Daily Beast’s daily operation: Apparently, each day, someone is tasked with printing up all of the stories published that day, so that Brown might have some way of reading them, and delivering them to her by hand. And if she’s, say, visiting her old London stomping grounds? Then this sheaf would need to be faxed to wherever she’s staying, probably her fave hotel, Ian Schraeger’s Sanderson House. It would really be wonderful if someone someday invented an easier way to transmit words and images across the Atlantic.

Well played Mr. Tate.

Gawker and The Daily Beast aren’t exactly direct competitors, but they do exist in the same universe. One would hope that Ms. Brown reads the Gawker piece and decide to immediaitely retaliate editorially against Gawker magnate Nick Denton. But for that to happen, a junior staffer might just have to fax this post to Tina, and that’s seems unlikely to happen.

Update – Denton defends Tina in the comment section of Tate’s post, and Gawker Editor in Chief Gabriel Snyder defends Tate:

Ryan, your tales of Tina Brown’s sclerotic ways are delicious. It’s the high-end tittle-tattle she has herself dealt in from Vanity Fair to her current venture. The Posner affair is an embarrassment. And there are those rumors that Barry Diller is getting impatient for revenues.

But where the hell is the to-be-sure paragraph? The Daily Beast may be an expensive proposition but it is one of the more successful web launches of the last few years. Helped by the American Idol revelations of a former colleague, Richard Rushfield, the site briefly overtook Gawker.com in January. The underlying trend is also upward.

Give credit where it is due — even if only briefly before you move on to mockery of Tina Brown’s antiquated work rhythms.

Snyder responds:

Fair enough. No one’s ever knocked Tina Brown an untalented editor. Just an unpleasant boss. But as a editorial entrepreneur, she’s been too dependent on benefactors — some reliable, like Si Newhouse, and another less so, like Harvey Weinstein. The test for the Daily Beast is to find an equilibrium between Diller’s interest level and Brown’s spending habits.

For the full post check out "From the Belly of the Daily Beast: The Onerous Apparatus of Tina Brown’s Website”

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-reports-tina-brown-reads-the-daily-beast-via-fax/feed/ 6 http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-baffler-returns-huzzah/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-baffler-returns-huzzah/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:30:29 +0000 Colby Hall http://www.mediaite.com/?p=84057 Gawker Media changed the way we consume information, analysis and media, there was a surprising little literary journal out of Chicago's south side called The Baffler. Edited by Thomas Frank, who's also known as columnist for WSJ and best-selling author of What's The Matter With Kansas, The Baffler compendium Commodify Your Dissent was a must-read for every literary hipster in lower Manhattan in the mid to late 90s. Well good news now-aging-hipsters. The Baffler is back with a brand new issue!]]> Long before Gawker Media changed the way we consume information, analysis and media, there was a surprising little literary journal out of Chicago’s south side called The Baffler. Edited by Thomas Frank, who’s also known as columnist for WSJ and best-selling author of What’s The Matter With Kansas, The Baffler compendium Commodify Your Dissent was a must-read for every literary hipster in lower Manhattan in the mid to late 90s. Well good news now-aging-hipsters. The Baffler is back with a brand new issue!

Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Christopher Borrelli reports:

The Baffler magazine — which punctured egos and provoked, which irritated New York Times editors and Hyde Park intellectuals alike, which was rooted in Chicago and became a smart, abrasive must-read during the 1990s, which predicted our economic future, then burned down (quite literally) — has returned. It’s been four years since the last issue; the new issue, slowly working its way into bookstores nationwide (and recently mailed out to patient subscribers), is only its 18th issue.

Its 18th in 22 years.

The staff was so slow and often distracted by other non-Baffler-related jobs, said former managing editor Matt Weiland, they would refer to the magazine as “a quarterly publication that only came out once a year.”

“But see, thing is,” said Thomas Frank, the founder and editor, from his home in Maryland, “I never had any intention of going away. I would get e-mails that said, ‘Too bad you guys are gone.’ So I would write back: ‘Don’t give up on us.’ Because we need the Baffler more now than ever. That contrarian attitude toward culture, that scoffi

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-baffler-returns-huzzah/feed/ 2 http://www.mediaite.com/online/inside-the-white-house-press-corps-savanah-guthrie/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/inside-the-white-house-press-corps-savanah-guthrie/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:43:34 +0000 Tommy Christopher http://www.mediaite.com/?p=80867 "The Daily Rundown," on MSNBC (9am EDT), with fellow White House correspondent Chuck Todd.

Savannah gets real with "The Daily Rundown," on MSNBC (9am EDT), with fellow White House correspondent Chuck Todd. Savannah gets real with Inside the White House Press Corps, with some surprising observations about Twitter, media bias, and the role of pudits in shaping the news.]]> NBC News White House Correspondent Savannah Guthrie is on the way up. She was recently named one of 2010′s Faces to Watch in TV by the LA Times, and has just launched a new show, “The Daily Rundown,” on MSNBC (9am EDT), with fellow White House correspondent Chuck Todd.

Savannah gets real with Inside the White House Press Corps, with some surprising observations about Twitter, media bias, and the role of pudits in shaping the news.




Transcript:

My name is Savanah Guthrie.  I’m one of the White House correspondents for NBC, along with Chuck Todd, and we’ve both been here since Inauguration day.  Actually, though, I did cover the Bush administration in the last year, I shouldn’t forget.  I’ve been covering Obama since he was inaugurated and then, I cover the White House beat on the weekends in December ’07.

What makes a good White House reporter?

A good White House reporter has a good aptitude for a lot of different information, for complex information.  You’ve got to be a quick read, have your eye on a lot of different issues.  I think, though it’s harder and harder to do, because we all serve a lot of different platforms, having a moment to be thoughtful and think about the institution, think about the bigger picture, is a good quality to have.  It’s one I aspire to but probably don’t always meet.

What one thing would you do to improve the briefing process?

Reporters’ questions could probably be shorter, and Gibbs’s answers could probably be shorter and more direct.

[..]

There should be more equality.  I don’t always sit in the front row, a lot of times I’m in the fourth row.  I know there are a lot of good questions back there.  Sometimes in the front row we follow up and that’s good.  We want our colleagues to be able to follow up, but we don’t want to monopolize.  I think it’s good to have different voices.

[…]

I’m representing, we’re back there, I’m back there with you too a lot.

To what degree do you think the opinion media influence the questions that are asked here?

I think so.  Opinion-makers, the “conventional wisdom” does shape a lot of the questions that get asked.  Just look at the SOTU which we just had.  People were saying, Does he need to reset? Does he need to get his groove back?  I don’t think anyone used those words.  But that kind of follows the thinking and the opining that happens, not just on the opinion pages, but also, let’s face it, on television.  So I think it’s  probably complementary.  Our reporting informs the opinion makers and the opinion makers in their conclusions inform some of the questions we ask.  It just is what it is.  It’s certainly not planned, it’s just the way things are.  Opinion makers probably push the envelope and sometimes we ask questions based on what we read.

Do you think there’s anything to the idea of media bias?

You know I’ve thought a lot about this.  Anybody that claims there’s zero bias is just not living in the real world.  I know that I and most of my colleagues work pretty hard to just play it straight and, we may not always succeed but, in terms of some organized bias, that I don’t buy.  I just think human beings can’t help but see things thru their own perspectives.  It’s an article of faith among journalists to try to be objective, to try to give a fair shake.  That’s the old way, the old school way, I still think it’s the best way.  But I guess I’m just more of a realist.  I think people, no matter how good their intentions and how they strive, people’s biases probably enter into it.  Hopefully they’re working very hard to make sure it doesn’t affect the coverage.

What do you take away from Twitter?

I actually find it to be pretty interesting.  It’s a good way to hear what people are thinking.  People are very opinionated.  Especially when it comes to covering politics, I don’t know that we’re getting a good cross-section of the average American.  People who are tweeting about politics generally feel pretty strongly, are pretty passionate, and they let those opinions be known.  Occasionally people have criticized me and I’ve thought, that’s a good, that’s a fair criticism.  I would have never though that would’ve been perceived that way.  Sometimes I think they’re unfairly hard on all of us.  But I’m not going to whine about it.  We go out there, I know what I’m trying to do.  I’m trying to be as straight about it as I can.  Sometimes I succeed and, apparently, sometimes I fail, or people think I do.

If someone has a factual question that I can answer very quickly, I like to do that, because I think it’s helpful.  If people just have opinions or they’re mad at me, I don’t really engage with it because I don’t know I can do it successfully with 143 characters.  I kind of don’t do it either way.  Sometimes people say nice things on Twitter and I might say thank you, because I want them to know I appreciate it.  But, I don’t know.  Plus, we’re so busy!

He’s [who?] so industrious as it is.  He’s actually one of my favorites.  I think he’s so funny.  Of course I’m a Jake follower.

What’s your favorite guilty pleasure TV show?

All of my TV watching is completely humiliating.  I’ll just tell you, the worst is American Idol.  When you watch it you know it’s for teenagers, it’s not for people of my age.  But I don’t watch the part that it’s at right now, where it’s all the auditions, but when it’s the top ten I do, I always watch it.  Of course, I TiVo it.  I also like Project Runway. A good show.  I didn’t watch Jersey Shore but I heard about it.  And then Jake was trying to cause mischief on Twitter with me and one of the J.S. people.  For having never seen it, I know a lot of the characters’ names.  I think I understand the basic premise.  Tanning and Guido and Snooki and, “It’s the Situation.”   I feel like I really missed a cultural phenomenon, actually.

What do you think of the new Apple iPad?

We were just talking about it in the booth.  I just saw it on the screen, I haven’t had a chance to look at it.  Well, apparently it’s the solution to all of our problems.  I don’t know.  It looks pretty cool.  I don’t know if I’m into reading books on an electronic device.  I like to feel the book. But I just got a Kindle for my mom for Christmas and she loves it.  Now I feel bad.  If I’d waited, I could’ve gotten her this iPad, which looks pretty nifty.  She does have the iPhone, she loves it.  She says it’s the one consumer product which doesn’t disappoint.

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/inside-the-white-house-press-corps-savanah-guthrie/feed/ 4 http://www.mediaite.com/online/jessica-coen-et-al-s-gawker-media-take-two-escape-from-new-york/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/jessica-coen-et-al-s-gawker-media-take-two-escape-from-new-york/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:04:10 +0000 Joe Coscarelli http://www.mediaite.com/?p=79244 New York magazine lost two high-ranking employees this week: deputy editor Hugo Lindgren to the revamped Bloomberg BusinessWeek and online managing editor Jessica Coen to Gawker Media's Jezebel. Gawker's reacquisition of Coen is the fourth in a recent trend: medium-to-high profile bloggers and reporters, nursed as neophytes on Nick Denton's teat, coming back to Gawker Media for a second time. Does this company represent online media's last best hope?]]>

Gawker in 2005, featuring Denton, Coen and Johnson

New York magazine lost two high-ranking employees this week, as announcements surfaced that deputy editor Hugo Lindgren would move to the revamped Bloomberg BusinessWeek, while online managing editor Jessica Coen would reenter the Gawker Media world that spawned her, this time as executive editor of the women’s blog Jezebel.

But apart from possible bellwether changes at New York, Gawker Media’s reacquisition of Coen is the fourth in a recent trend: medium-to-high profile bloggers and reporters, nursed as neophytes on Nick Denton‘s teat, coming back to Gawker Media for a second time. Doree Shafrir, Richard Lawson, Joel Johnson and Jessica Coen: If these names make you think of people you follow on Twitter or Tumblr, read on. It seems like their movement — usually away from corporate or old guard institutions — means that this is the future. Right here on the internet?

Gawker used Lindgren leaving the side of his longtime leader, New York editor-in-chief Adam Moss, to chronicle the dying breed of a true Number Two, or the “trusted confidante on staff,” but more interesting is the byline on the piece: Doree Shafrir, a former Gawker.com editor who returned at the start of the new year after a stint at the New York Observer. Now a contributor under the “Culture” umbrella, Shafrir seems to have brought her Observer-style conceptual trend pieces (usually NYC-centric, naturally) back to the flagship site, enjoying both editorial freedom and a relaxed posting schedule. She’s earned it, as a veteran of the NYC media clusterfuck/graveyard/dating pool/drinking team/etc. and the site is richer with her back, whether at a post a month or a post a day.

But it’s also a deliberate move, not unlike hiring John Cook as the “Investigations” team. Denton has gone legitimate and is gunning for a dynasty with long term investments. The moves are also as symbolic as they are practical, with overlord Denton snatching back polished and influential writers that he may see as rightfully his from the more “respectable” companies they bailed for in the first place.

Come with me, if you will, to the sports world, just for one paragraph: Gawker Media was once a minor league team, whipping prospects into shape before shipping them to the big leagues — Vanity Fair, the Observer, New York and more. But in a few turbulent years, the Major League teams (Old Media) struggled financially, leading to an arguable drop in quality. Gawker, in the minors where the costs and pressures were less, started playing better ball, eventually competing with (and beating!) more established teams. With newfound money and respect, they have the cash and cachet to buy back their now fully formed former prospects.

This evolution, for those who have been following the New Media Cabal for years, was teased in the oft-cited n+1 piece (obituary?) “Gawker 2002-2007″ by Carla Blumenkranz, but her analysis ended prematurely and her prediction was unnecessarily grave. The piece told tale of a scrappy upstart truly gawking at its idols-turned-victims-turned-bosses: cutting media’s real stars (Tina Brown, Anna Wintour) down to size, ultimately in hopes of impressing (or at least embarrassing) them. A site history follows, from O.G. gawker (lower-case) Elizabeth Spiers to Coen, Emily Gould and Choire Sicha (twice, too!).

Then, the eventual attempted guillotine from n+1: “You could say that as Gawker Media grew, from Gawker’s success, Gawker outlived the conditions for its existence.” Except that three years later it hasn’t. Now, some people who don’t read literary magazines are paying attention. New York is no longer the only audience, like New York is no longer an endgame.

>>>NEXT: More on Jessica Coen, Gawker Media’s future and Nick Denton’s ambition…

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/jessica-coen-et-al-s-gawker-media-take-two-escape-from-new-york/feed/ 2 http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-gawker-decade/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-gawker-decade/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:29:05 +0000 Robert Quigley http://www.mediaite.com/?p=54792 blog of the decade by Adweek, which proclaimed it "the template for what a blog should be." Leaving aside the question of "should," Gawker has set the template for what the blogs of this decade aspire to be. Gawker Media was founded in 2002. In those seven years, its founder Nick Denton has built an empire, and forever changed the game, how it's played -- and who gets to play it.]]> “Thus, regular readers of a Hearst paper would find other newspapers insipid, destitute of the racy detail to which they were accustomed. Conversely, a reader of the sedate New York Times, on turning to a Hearst sheet, would be apt to shudder at the discovery of a frantic world he had not dreamed existed.”

–W.A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst

---

As you may have heard, Gawker was recently named the
blog of the decade by Adweek. Three other Gawker Media blogs, Gizmodo, Deadspin, and Lifehacker, were finalists. Adweek noted that Gawker itself was only number seven among Gawker Media properties in terms of traffic, but proclaimed it “the template for what a blog should be” — a quote eagerly snatched up by Gawker’s advertising department.

Leaving aside the question of “should,” Gawker has undeniably set the template for what the blogs of this decade aspire to be.

Gawker Media was founded in 2002. In the seven years since, its founder Nick Denton has built an empire of Hearstian scope and ambitions and forever changed the game, how it’s played — and who gets to play it. From a one-person blog written by a media outsider from Wetumpka, Alabama — you may now know her as consummate media insider Elizabeth Spiers — Denton built an empire on the backs of scrappy outsiders throwing spitballs at the big dogs and taking them down a few pegs, for the sake of the minions toiling below.

Eventually, this expanded to a stable of niche blogs run by ballsy, initially no-name young writers taking the same skeptical, ironic tone, covering a beat with an eye for finding the gossip behind the photo ops and the juice behind the press releases.

But back to Nick Denton, the man who started it all.

The Denton-Hearst analogy is not a new one. In 2007, Editorialiste was early to pick up on Gawker’s trend towards breaking original stories over aggregating old ones, and foresaw its shift towards a new “digital yellow journalism:”

Gawker Media sites would become more like MSM — original content and aggregated content when needed (like the AP, but without paying for it). But this is a whole new brand of journalism, effectively digital yellow journalism: Original opinion mixed with original stories.

On this kind of path, Nick Denton would be the next William Randolph Hearst, the next Joseph Pulitzer, the next Rupert Murdoch – a man with an army of niche publications tweaked for the popular masses.

On his own blog, Denton obliquely compared himself to Hearst, and Gawker to past revolutions in media. “For many New York writers, Gawker is a proxy for this harsh and competitive new world, because the gossip site covers the death agonies of Manhattan’s old-line media industry, without much respect for the club’s cosy rules … I presume Hearst missed a few Manhattan dinner parties. He survived.”

(N.B.: Denton does not lack for invitations amongst Manhattan’s media partygoers.)

Gawker’s Innovations

But: to be the William Randolph Hearst of the 21st century, it’s not enough to wear “especially dazzling cravats“ and build a castle; one has to innovate. How has Gawker transformed media, for better and for worse?

• As mentioned above, the most obvious Denton-Hearst connection is bringing sharp opinion back into the news. Why dredge up a quotable doctor to tell you that people shouldn’t eat 1200 calorie tubs of popcorn when you can succinctly say the same thing yourself?

Given old media’s increasing reliance on uncritically swallowed press releases and soundbites, this was badly needed.

• By openly obsessing over pageviews, i.e. display ads, i.e. $$$, and making them into a public competition, Gawker shaped profitable writing for the web and redefined writers, for better or worse, as people who actually care about the bottom line.

• Gawker has singularly eroded the boundaries between public and private life as covered by media. See also: Deadspin’s emptying of their tip box on sexual shenanigans at ESPN, which slimed private, behind-the-scenes executives as well as semipublic news personalities. As the fascinating n+1 essay on Gawker puts it, “This was the important development: the decision to treat every subject, known or unknown, in public or private situations, with the fascinated ill will that tabloid magazines have for their subjects.”

To their credit, they anticipated the trend towards micro-celebrities by treating these small fry the same way they treated Paris Hilton. In the process, they made a few stars of their own (cf. Julia Allison). But destroying private life is the single worst thing Gawker has done.

Critiques aside, the 2000s has been Gawker’s decade in media. But will they be able to hold onto the next?

>>>NEXT PAGE: The Next Gawker decade?

>>>Follow the author of this post on Twitter

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-gawker-decade/feed/ 7 http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-duped-into-running-fake-ads-with-virus/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-duped-into-running-fake-ads-with-virus/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:56:39 +0000 Joe Coscarelli http://www.mediaite.com/?p=39168 the future of advertising, and acknowledged that bloggers face a new predicament of impossibly low rates. But there are other technological pitfalls -- just ask Gawker Media, who was scammed by a client pretending to be Suzuki into running ads that crashed readers' browsers and even installed malware onto their systems.]]> Yesterday, we wondered about the future of newspaper advertising and a move toward the internet, but acknowledged that bloggers face a new predicament of impossibly low rates. But there are other technological pitfalls — just ask Gawker Media, who was scammed by a client pretending to be Suzuki into running ads that crashed readers’ browsers and even installed malware onto their systems.

Business Insider is reporting that Gawker’s ad sales unit believed it was negotiating ad placement with a man from the Starcom MediaVest Group — “one of the largest and most celebrated global brand communications and consumer contact organizations,” according to the shyster’s email  – but it was all an attempt to infiltrate reader computers. Gawker Media shared their entire email correspondence with Business Insider. Here is a portion of the fake query letter:

First and foremost, we want to run a performance campaign for Suzuki across your network. Our budget to start is $25k+. Campaign should be live by the end of the month. We can also run on moviefone and/or entertainment verticals.

Please let me know your rates, inventory and volume so we can include > you in our upcoming media plans.

Twenty-five thousand dollars by the end of the month sounds pretty good! And after numerous emails of insider shop talk, Gawker was fooled. Upon realizing the ads were not only fake, but dangerous, a Gawker sales employee was incredulous at how thorough the scam was: “Look at how together this guy was! Corporate politics, eCPM, premium branding, IAB sizes, re-evaluating rates! Outrageous.” Gawker then shared the following warning:

From: GAWKER SALES GUY

• Someone is approaching publishers as a representative of Spark-SMG on the Suzuki account, even though Suzuki very recently switched agencies.
• George Delarosa and his accomplice Douglas Velez claim that there’s a limited amount of money left in the Suzuki account for them to spend, and they need to spend it quickly.
• They have intimate knowledge of online ad sales, including terms like eCPM, roadblocking, RON, IAB sizes, lead generation, traffic coordinators, etc.
• Email comes from @spark-smg.com instead of @sparksmg.com, though the who-is for their spoof domain is very close to the actual domain (Erin has links in her original email)
• They maintain a Chicago area code (where Spark is based) but claim to be in London, even though they couldn’t give us the actual time in London when asked.
• Unlike most spammers, these guys were happy to jump on the phone to get ads back up and running.
• Clue that should have tipped us off was that we had to use our IO template…most major agencies like Spark have their own IO template.

But as far as malware distributors go, this guy is easily one of the most convincing I’ve ever seen. I doubt George is his real name, but whoever it is definitely worked in online ad sales at some point.

(pic via)

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-duped-into-running-fake-ads-with-virus/feed/ 0 http://www.mediaite.com/online/25-bloggers-you-need-to-know/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/25-bloggers-you-need-to-know/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:59:24 +0000 Mediaite Staff http://www.mediaite.com/?p=36573 As online writing becomes increasingly a part of the mainstream dialogue in America, “blogger” is no longer a dirty word. Some of the best writers and reporters of our time operate exclusively on the internet, and millions regularly read their work. Matt Drudge, Arianna Huffington, even Perez Hilton; these are big, newsmaking names that many people have heard before. 

But some of the most talented and influential bloggers still work under the radar. Whether they write for niche audiences or are simply less visible than their more mainstream counterparts, these men and women are the unsung heroes of the blogosphere, known to circles of insiders, but uncredited for the vaster influence they hold.

In this in-depth, magazine-length feature (6500 words!), Mediaite has assembled a list of 25 of the best underrated bloggers you need to know, drawing from a variety of backgrounds, and explained why they matter. You’d do well to learn — and bookmark, and RSS — the names you don’t know already. If they aren’t themselves household names in a few years, the odds are good that they will continue to smartly analyze the news, break stories, serve as role models for others, and put their stamps on the flow of information far beyond the Internet.

Below we’ve designated five themes and selected five up and coming or under-appreciated bloggers in each category, including:

Hidden Hands: The workhorses behind blue-chip sites with tremendous clout who often go unrecognized for their accomplishments as individuals.

Blogs Bloggers Read: Bloggers behind sites worshipped by insiders that mold the shape of the online conversation.

Niche Experts: These are the writers whose areas of focus may not garner them the biggest following, but in music, fashion, cars, business, and food, they’re as good as it gets.

Power Hitters: They may be big names already, but they are somehow still undersold considering the amount of work they put in and the amount of influence they wield.

Reinventors: Bloggers who, rather than resting on their well-deserved laurels for past accomplishments, have continued to innovate and reinvent their editorial presences on the web.

>>>NEXT: The first five top bloggers are the Hidden Hands…

(image via)

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/25-bloggers-you-need-to-know/feed/ 4 http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-monopolizes-media-by-letting-its-commenters-do-the-work/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-monopolizes-media-by-letting-its-commenters-do-the-work/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:37:59 +0000 Joe Coscarelli http://www.mediaite.com/?p=35439 Today’s Gawker Media redesign unveils a new feature that attempts to optimize the loyalty of the network’s already robust fan base. Gawker Open Forums now exists on all of the group’s nine blogs, integrating social networking, crowdsourcing and standard discussion forums, leaving each blog as not only a conversation starter, but a channel where news can be broken, shared and commented on by readers, all in one place.

When a visitor arrives at the Gawker homepage, they now see a giant, Twitter-like search and submission box that reads, “Got a tip for us?” beside a share button (see the photo below). Above each post’s accompanying photo used to be a clever tag — ie “And Now He’s Dead” or “Things We Actually Like” — but those have been replaced by keywords marked with a hashtag, including #tips, #magazines and #scandal. Whereas the old tag pages merely archived old posts, the new set up will allow for approved commenters to submit their own content to be sorted among each blog’s editorial work.

“I’m expecting chaos,” Gawker publisher Nick Denton told Nieman Journalism Lab. “But as the front pages of our sites become ever more professional, it’s even more important to allow anarchy to bubble up from below. The goal is to blur the line between our editors and commenter-contributors.”

It’s a savvy move, really. When Gawker started, it was the pesky runt of the media world, commenting with a mix of envy and bitterness about the establishment. Seven years later, the Gawker Media collection of sites is arguably more powerful than those they mock and deride, and have in the process amassed an unpredictable but fervent following, as likely to pile-on a Gawker foe as commit a mutiny against the site itself.

Denton continued to explain how Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg gave him the idea for Open Forums. “He told me about the original plan for Facebook — the dark Facebook on which you were defined not by yourself but by others,” he told Nieman. “Nobody’s quite as smart and good-looking as they appear in their press releases.” With this, Denton can keep the site’s bad guy rep by encouraging salacious gossip and takedowns.

>>>NEXT: What does this mean for the rest of online media?

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-monopolizes-media-by-letting-its-commenters-do-the-work/feed/ 0 http://www.mediaite.com/online/seven-year-old-gawker-bigger-than-127-year-old-la-times/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/seven-year-old-gawker-bigger-than-127-year-old-la-times/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:20:20 +0000 Robert Quigley http://www.mediaite.com/?p=20014 LA Times and nearly as much as the New York Times -- and with a staff a fraction of their sizes. Need evidence of their influence? They are now effectively running the state department. A look at their growth and impact after the jump.]]>

Seven years after its founding, Gawker Media is getting more online traffic than the LA Times and nearly as much as the New York Times — and with a staff a fraction of their sizes. Need evidence of their influence? They are now effectively running the state department. A look at their growth and impact after the jump.

Not everybody likes Gawker, but everyone in the online arena wants to be like them in some way. They’ve written a good chunk of the online playbook (I think the book is titled The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media). To be a successful online media site is to use some of the tricks that Gawker has pioneered. Lest anyone accuse them of being a mere parasitic aggregator, they regularly break news as well, whether it’s by doing investigative reporting or by publishing stuff that everyone else is afraid to. So: cheers, Gawker. And happy birthday, ish.

Here’s Silicon Alley Insider’s chart of Gawker Media’s traffic versus the NYT and the LA Times, which they drew from comScore (click on the chart to read their full analysis):

Need any further evidence of Gawker’s influence? They’re effectively running the State Department.

(h/t Business Insider)

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