Please forgive the victory lap, but since this will be my last post as Managing Editor, our rather astounding traffic success bears repeating: in just two and a half years, Mediaite.com welcomes nearly three million monthly unique visitors to the site. Including syndicated content like embedded video, that number more than doubles: six million unique users who are taking a monthly gander at content curated and packaged by Mediaite editors and writers. Given that we have literally spent less than $100 on a marketing or promotional budget (we tried an $80 Facebook campaign once), this is nothing short of a miraculous outcome. Nearly all of our traffic came from hard work, hustle, and being just a little bit smarter than we needed to be.

As is the case with any media entity that aims to adjudge others, Mediate’s existence has also sometimes drawn mixed emotions amongst its peers and critics. When Mediaite launched in July of 2009, nearly the entire navel-gazing set of NY-based media critics openly mocked the idea of another website entering an already too-crowded field, and not unreasonably, I might add. But the dramatically shifting media landscape of the past few years presented opportunities in which I knew could set ourselves apart.

So what were the reasons behind our success? They seem fairly self-evident to me in hindsight, but it always surprises me when fellow editors have scratched their head at our success. First, we do really smart analysis, but let me put that aside for a moment.

We knew early that a key opportunity for differentiation was “owning the buzz” one gets from learning something new in the world of digital news. In fact, we have sometimes eschewed long-form analysis in order to get our story up fast, in large part because the world of media criticism in the last few years is often banal or masturbatory. We targeted readers who, when we posted quickly, were smart enough to figure out their own analysis if we packaged and promoted stories in a way that revealed a deeper understanding of the conflict at nearly every story’s core.

We also saw an opening to focus on the burgeoning world of opinion journalism, or the intersection of media, politics and opinion. The world of “opiniotainment” is a Balkanized one in which news consumers seem to more often seek information and commentary that reinforces their pre-existing opinions. Surely neither one party nor ideology is the sole province of absurd hyperbole, or lacking in journalistic integrity. It seems like common sense but covering news, analysis and commentary from a politically agnostic perspective — without sacrificing an entertaining point of view –- was oddly a significant differentiation for us in a crowded marketplace.

The final reason behind our success, in my view, was our aggressive position on curating and embedding video and audio clips. While other sites are looking for great moments from campaign stops, press conferences and the like, we mined the constant stream of commentary and analysis from the networks themselves. You don’t have to be a “media strategist” to recognize we live in a clip culture, and Mediaite’s partnership with video platform Magnify was truly an important partnership for us. Bringing on the tireless video editor Jon Nicosia really helped set us off into a new stratosphere of relevance and influence.

The last three years have been a complete whirlwind, and it has been particularly satisfying to see the fruits of our very intense labor in a myriad of ways. In less than three years as Managing Editor, I went from being just a busy television writer/producer competing for quality work in New York City, to someone who was sought out for face-to-face meetings with Roger Ailes, Ken Jautz and Phil Griffin (the holy trinity of cable news executives), as well as many of the biggest personalities in the business. I’ve been on satellite phone calls with war correspondents in the Middle East, and interviewed some of television’s most respected on-air hosts and reporters in their midtown offices. I’ve also witnessed first-hand the more unseemly side of the promotional party circuit which fuels the sometimes too-cozy relationship between media beat writers and their subjects. As the parent of two small boys and husband to working wife, the party scene was first on my list of many sacrifices.

The list of both public and off-the-record stories to which I have become privy is a lengthy and entertaining one (hello book deal?), of which there are many anecdotes worth sharing. But in the interest of time, I will choose one that might illustrate this bizarre and, at times, hilarious world in which I have worked as Managing Editor of Mediaite.

Last year saw a number of both strange and compelling stories, many of which you may have first learned about on this very site. But who could have predicted that, as an overall news story, the sad saga of Anthony Weiner’s tweeted image (and brazen and misbegotten cover-up effort) would have been a more significant traffic driver than even the killing of Osama bin Laden.

You will recall that our old friend (and foe) Andrew Breitbart and his team of editors were first to break that story. And given how he was still somewhat smarting over the Shirley Sherrod affair, his reporting was taken with a perhaps huge dose of skepticism from the mainstream media. In fact, when we first wrote of their initial report, we added our own level of cynical plausibility as well, which resulted in a massive Twitter battle I found myself engaged in while watching Pirates of the Carribean with my kids on Memorial Day weekend evening. Such is the life of the Mediaite Managing Editor.

So how was your Memorial Day weekend of last year? Mine was spent mostly on the telephone with Andrew Breitbart trying to unpack perhaps the most confusing and bizarre of stories that was truly at the intersection of politics and social media. During a Sunday evening picnic in which other dads were busy playing Whiffle Ball™ with their sons, I was enjoying a rather spirited discussion with my editors (and at times Breitbart) trying to figure out how best to handle the potentially explosive story.

But as has been the case in many stories, what starts out as seemingly controversial often turns out to be sublimely entertaining. Breitbart and I were in fairly consistent communication during that episode and developed a level of mutual respect, especially after I found myself in the cross-hairs of both the left and the right. Mr. Breitbart returned a phone call to me after a cross-country flight that brought him to NY, just minutes before Anthony Weiner was scheduled to own up to his online behavior. I suggested to Breitbart that he attend the press conference himself, which of course he did, and became the warm-up act in what was one of the strangest and most entertaining media moments of the last year.

I have learned a lot about media and politics while in this role, but no greater lesson than the stubbornness of ignorance. Put another way, all too often in political media, the stronger the argument, the weaker is the case. The more positive side to that equation, however, is that news consumers are actually much smarter than the content created by most editors, writers and producers. Treating a potential audience with respect and expected intelligence (while not being boring) is almost always a recipe for success. It’s a shame that it’s not always followed.

First and foremost, I need to thank founder Dan Abrams for giving me the opportunity to lead a small but incredibly talented and hard working team of writers and editors who worked very hard to create something so influential out of nothing. Secondly, I have to thank Rachel Sklar, who appeared on a cable news program I was writing and producing, for making the initial introduction. And I would be remiss not to mention the original team, many of whom were assembled and joined by Skalr, including Steve Krakauer, Glynnis MacNicol, Robert Quigley and Tommy Christopher, as well as only slightly later additions such as the aforementioned Nicosia, Frances Martel and Jon Bershad. There are many other talented staff members who have come through, nearly all of whom I have enjoyed working with immensely, as well as the current all-star staff of Alex Alvarez, Jamie Crugnale and Nando DiFino, who I am sure will ably drive the site’s continued success. I am quite confident that the site will continue to flourish and grow, whoever is in charge.

I intend to continue contributing to Mediaite as a columnist, but only occasionally and in my free time. Until then, I encourage you to follow me on Twitter, and hey, keep reaching for the stars!

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.

Mediaite’s new team, led by Managing Editor Colby Hall and Senior Editor Jon Nicosia, welcomed over 2 million unique visitors to the site for the first time since its launch in July 2009. Including syndicated content, Mediaite had close to 5 million visitors according to Google Analytics. It has also begun to make regular appearances on a list of the top ten blogs in the country as ranked by Technorati. In fact, three of our four sites—Mediaite, Geekosystem, and Sportsgrid—as well as cousin site Gossipcop.com all had their highest number of monthly visitors ever in November.

Geekosystem, led by Robert Quigley and deputy Susana Polo, saw a record 1.4 million unique visitors. Dan Fogarty and Glenn Davis over at Sportsgrid—which just launched in late May—had 510,000 monthly uniques, their most ever. Styleite, however, retained the trophy as our site with the most pageviews per visitor.

According to web traffic assessor Quantcast.com, all five sites together (most of which launched this year) are now seeing traffic consistent with or greater than sites like LATimes.com, WSJ.com, Slate.com, Politico.com, NYMag.com and other household media brands.

Considering this success, it’s hardly surprising that our staff is growing (a little). Mediaite is thrilled to announce two new hires. Alex Alvarez, who has been doing a fantastic job editing Mediabistro’s Newsfeed, is joining us as Editor. Having previously reported on the sometimes unsavory lives of celebrities at Guanabee.com and, later, the even more unsavory lives of those in New York media at FishbowlNY, Alex now comes to work for one of those unsavory Manhattan media characters.

Matt Schneider, a former corporate lawyer, also joins as an editor. As an attorney, he specialized in finance, bankruptcy, hedge funds and so on. But while toiling away, scrutinizing arcane regulations and criminal codes, Matt kept a deep, dark secret: he’s a nearly obsessive politics and media junkie. (You should have seen the animation he created with his resume). Who knew someone who billed by the hour could have a great blogger sensibility?

This is just the beginning. We will have more exciting announcements to come in the next few weeks. So stay tuned—and thank you!

This week marks the one year anniversary of the launch of Mediaite, and what a year it has been. As Dan Abrams notes, predictions of Mediaite’s doom were greatly exaggerated, and as Mediaite columnist and White House reporter from Day One, I have viewed the site’s successful first year from a unique perch. When Rachel Sklar pitched the site to me, I have to confess I was a little bit skeptical, but it didn’t take long for me to see that she and Dan were on to something.

Among other early worries about the site, Rachel and I wondered, at the beginning, what a media blog needed with a White House reporter. By the same token, in hiring me, Mediaite found itself with one, so they needed to find a use for me.

My previous work covering the White House tended to be much heavier on policy and politics than on the media, so it was a challenge, at first, to adapt my style to the new site. In fact, my first-ever question as Mediaite’s White House reporter didn’t even make it onto the blog. For posterity’s sake, here it is:

Luckily, I adapted to covering the media, and the media obligingly adapted to me. The Summer of Health Care provided lots of fodder that was in my wheelhouse, and gave way to an ever-shrinking news cycle that thrust the media into the center of almost every story. It also didn’t hurt that Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was rarely shy about pushing back against all manner of media outlets (including Mediaite) and memes. There were also ample opportunities to cover the view from behind the scenes, as with the Inside the White House Press Corps interview series.

When I returned to the White House as a Mediaite scribe, I noticed one difference right away. When I was with AOL, I used to always get this reaction: “AOL does news?”

With Mediaite, though, there was instant recognition, despite people’s trouble with the name (Media-lite? Media-ate?). Early on, this was due mainly to the participation of Dan Abrams and Rachel Sklar, and more importantly, to the ingenious Power Grid.

Pretty quickly, though, I began to hear less about the Grid, and more about our site as a whole. We developed a reputation for fair, even-handed reporting and commentary, and the people I spoke to in Washington took notice. After a few months, it became common for someone to walk up to me at the White House and say, “You’re Tommy Christopher, right? From Mediaite?” This was a pleasant shock to me. When I was with Politics Daily, people would recognize me despite my outlet, not because of it.

While some people still have trouble with our name, the people we cover in politics and the media sure don’t anymore.

It’s a poorly-kept secret that I can be a little bit temperamental, and coupled with gun-shyness at my well publicized firing from my last job (I note, with satisfaction, our decent lead over my old employer on the Technorati 100, with no help from a parent network), it’s not always great fun being my editor. At the beginning, I was very suspicious of even the most mundane editorial note, certain that there were hints of my doom in every one. Mediaite allows me a great deal of freedom, but as a writer, I have a tendency to be protective of my words, as though each Road House reference were a brush stroke on the Sistine Chapel.

My temperament required such special handling that Managing Editor Colby Hall and I even have a running joke that I’m Hannibal Lecter, and he’s Agent Starling, and I should be handed nothing but soft paper. There’s also the knee-slapper “You’re fired,” to which I sometimes reply “Too soon!” Over the course of the past year, Colby and I have traded many an earful, and in the process, he’s earned my trust, and hopefully, I’ve earned his.

Personally, this has been an incredible year. Much of my first 6 months with Mediaite are detailed in my 2009 Year in Review, but here are some highlights that, if you had told me about them last June, I would have thought you were nuts:

Getting Blacklisted by the Senate Finance Committee: This was one of the most frustrating, yet proudest, moments of the year for me. I had become such a pain in the ass to them in trying to get to the bottom of the lousy PHRMA deal, they just dropped all pretense and admitted they were just lying to me. Proud, because it meant I was doing my job well, and frustrating because I would much rather have gotten answers to my questions.

The Public Option: To the extent that a public health insurance option ever had a chance, I did everything I  could to get the White House to clarify its equivocal, and eventually fruitless, support for it.

Shooting the Shit With Dan Rather: For some reason, we held a launch party 5 months after our launch, and while there were lots of luminaries there, I was blown away by the time and attention given to me by broadcasting legend Dan Rather. It was just another surreal experience for a guy not 2 years removed from being a cubicle drone.

CPAC 2010: What an intense couple of days that was. Aside from getting to see my good friend Ed Morrissey, I also met Rachel Maddow for the first time, had an infamous run-in with Andrew Breitbart, a surreal confrontation with James O’Keefe pal Christian Hartsock, and got to do karaoke with about 10 Redstaters.

Briefing in the Rose Garden: Sometimes, it’s the simple pleasures. I sure am glad Gibbs isn’t doing that now, though.

Meeting Alan Colmes: For some reason, my job usually ends up putting me together with conservatives, so it was nice to be able to sit down and talk to a guy I agreed with for a change.

Chuck Todd’s Star Wars Impressions: Of all the interviews I did with White House reporters this year, Chuck’s still makes me laugh out loud.

Nancy Pelosi Protest Video: This might be my favorite piece of video this year. Aside from being funny, infuriating, and poignant all at once, I felt it really captured some essential truths about our politics, and how poorly served we can be by a two party monopoly.

Helen Thomas: I couldn’t call Helen’s sudden retirement a “highlight” of this past year, but working with her certainly was. The lightning speed of that story’s arc was perfectly illustrative of the shrinking of the news cycle this past year.

Hollering at Colby Hall in the White House Rose Garden: As I said before, it’s not always great fun being my editor. Never was this more the case than on a hot day last November when, as I waited with the assembled press for the President to make remarks in the Rose Garden, I got into a heated shouting match with Mediaite’s managing editor, Colby Hall. I walked about a hundred feet away from the media, but apparently, not far enough. You know how everyone suddenly gets quiet while you’re yelling something embarrassing? Yeah, that happened just as I was yelling my loudest, and cursiest. I turned, and every eye was on me.

It wouldn’t be the last time Colby would have to talk me down, but it was the first time I considered that, maybe, he was in my corner after all.

Meeting Hillary Clinton: This is a story that I haven’t told in print before, and I won’t tell the whole story now, either. Let’s just say that a series of events occurred that ended with me unexpectedly passing Hillary Clinton on a staircase that I wasn’t supposed to be on. As I approached her, I ran through several greetings in my head, and though I decided on “Hello, Madam Secretary,” what actually came out of my face (along with my best officious nod) was “Hi, Secretary!”

I don’t mortify easily, but I still bury my face in my hands at the thought of it.

Getting in Tony Hayward’s Grill: While Jake Tapper‘s zinger at the end makes this clip awesome, it was the sight of my camera, inches from Hayward’s face in a wire service photo, that really took this thing to 11 for me. At first, I was just pissed off that Hayward had fled without answering any questions, but later, I realized that his silence spoke volumes, as did our lack thereof.

The Kevin Jennings Story: Of all the stories I wrote this year, this is probably my favorite. Debunking the barrage of smears against Kevin Jennings was such a heavy lift, many in the mainstream media didn’t bother to try.

I don’t know what this next year holds, but it’s off to a bang-up start. Meet you back here next July.

Alas, it’s hardly surprising that we were met with a tepid reception. We are, at times, reviewing the reviewers and, well, let’s just say that — shockingly! — some in media don’t appreciate being reviewed. Fortunately for us, despite those early pokes, most leaders in media have come to embrace us. We truly appreciate that so many of you have made Mediaite a regular part of your daily web diet.

Mediaite is now welcoming between 1.3 to 1.5 million unique visitors per month to the site. That already puts us ahead of the name-brand media industry websites, significantly ahead of most of the best-known political blogs, and obviously far above what I could have anticipated when we launched. Even more important, the quality of the news we report has quickly made Mediaite a significant player in the national debate. Mediaite is cited regularly in many of the most prestigious traditional publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Forbes, NPR, USA Today, The Atlantic, The Week, and the National Review, as well as routinely being cited by the outlets leading the digital revolution, including Yahoo! and AOL as well as leading political sites like Huffington Post, Drudge, Hot Air, Raw Story, Salon, and others (“others” includes regularly and proudly getting blasted by media watchdogs Media Matters from the left and Newsbusters from the right).

Our team has also broken many of the major media stories of the past year, ranging from the launch of new websites to the sale of existing ones, from television shows coming and going (including CNN’s Campbell Brown leaving) to mass layoffs at networks. Plus, we have been at the forefront of web video as this medium reaches new levels of popularity. That includes our exclusive series of interviews with members of the White House Press Corps, as well as curating news clips from the most exciting moments on cable news.

Despite our tiny staff, we have more than achieved the goal I set forth in my original note one year ago, when I hoped it would become “a unique property that will quickly become a must-read for anyone interested in media, the business of it and the personalities behind it.”

Mediaite is also now the proud parent of three other thriving sites, Geekosystem.com, Styleite.com (which launched in March) and Sportsgrid.com (launched in May). Geekosystem, which examines the online world through the “geek prism,” is rapidly approaching the one million uniques per month mark after just six months in business. Including sister site Gossipcop.com (which has also vastly exceeded expectations in less than a year) and our syndicated content, our sales team is selling over five million unique visitors per month. After all, what is a content site these days without that ultimate proof of viability: advertisers? Last month alone, Mediaite had, among others, Yahoo, Bing, Mercedes, Vespa, Showtime, Syfy, and Bravo as sponsors. In the months to come we will be announcing a variety of additional revenue generating endeavors, as well as additional sites. Even so, this is is still a work in progress, and we look forward to trying to take it to new heights in year two.

So here is to the Mediaite team. They deserve all the credit for nimbly avoiding “doom,” for somehow making even certain skeptics care about “the business and personalities behind the media,” and for admitting they work for a site that was once compared to a diarrhea remedy — even before it was cool. And of course, a big thank you to all of you who have read us, written for us, and advertised with us.

In the meantime, here is a little video look-back at the year that was. (Special thanks to Kevin Gotkin and Video Jon for their terrific work on the video below!)

This, however, destroys a gold mine of entertainment for the Media geek in me. Robert had some fun and showed how SHAKIRA now provides an excellent avenue for a Scrabble Bingo where your only other option may have been a massively obscure Greek musical instrument. There has to be more helpful proper nouns from across the media world that will help you succeed, and that’s what I’m here to help you find.

I was being mildly generous with the laws of random chance related to tiles while steering clear of multipliers for scoring; I did observe some of the major rules of letter distribution from the English version as best as possible, though. This last rule has me heartbroken: With only 1 z in the standard, 100-tile game, there’s no way you could  end up with a pocket of ZZEINEB and turn “SKI” into Brzezinski (which would be a savage 152 point play on a triple-word score if it was humanly possible). There is still a lot more out there though, so let’s get this going.

Cable News Division

Mika Brzezinski may be out thanks to one too many Zs, but that doesn’t mean her other Morning Joe counterparts couldn’t help you out. With high letter frequency, GEIST could be a nice early play. Carrying a hand of  OORSUHG and you could turn the measly four-letter CARB into a bingo driven SCARBOROUGH. Willie will only get you 6 points, but Morning Joe himself could be good for a minimum of 69 without multipliers, which would be tough to avoid on a word that long.

= 6

= 69 (with Bingo)

Let’s stay on the 24-hour nets for our next one: picking between Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow? The Scrabble board says the MSNBC host is going to slightly more productive for your scoring needs, but as Beck would point out, you’d have to get more handouts from the bank after you play Rachel’s name for only one additional point. And he just doesn’t understand why he’s the only one pointing that out.

= 13

= 12

Late Night TV Division

Team Leno or Team Conan? The math says that Conan will get you a slight advantage, especially in the 18-34 demographic. However, massively appropriately, David Letterman takes care of both them quite easily in the game of Scrabble. If LET or MAN are on the board, it won’t take significant luck to get the tiles you need to make a quick strike on your opponent.

= 4

= 7

= 11

Bad Pop Culture Reference Section

Some great news for everyone who got a chance to read Rachel Sklar’s excellent breakdown of the Release the Kraken meme: ZEUS beats BIEBER in the Scrabble test. If that’s not good news from the universe, I don’t know what is.

= 13

= 10

Scrabble Scoring courtesy of my new favorite tool, Kate Spanos’ Scrabble Calculator.

As we said last week, Geekosystem will delve into geek culture with reports and analysis on the myriad aspects of geekdom: from gadgets and video games to comic books and science fiction. The site will merge the content aggregation of popular web culture destinations with the editorial voice of the post-Web 2.0 generation of geek luminaries.

Editor Robert Quigley introduces the site and describes its mission:

As of this morning, Geekosystem is live. The servers are serving, the URLs are uniformly locating their resources, the arcology is under its neat little dome and stocked with birds, fish, and fresh water, and there are a bunch of well-oiled, steampunky gears and clocks spinning around and doing something cool. But what does this machine do?

Our goal is nothing less than to unite all of the tribes of geekdom under one common banner. The truth of the matter is, there’s a lot of overlap between the different families of geekery. The geeks who are into gadgets and computers are often the same as the geeks who are into comics and sci-fi are often the same as the geeks who are fueling the culture of the Web, one forum or imageboard at a time. As the site’s name suggests, Geekosystem recognizes and celebrates these interconnections and the often-overlooked personalities who hold it all together. Live together, die alone!

If you’re like us, you probably already have a go-to gadget site. You might get your social news fix at a Reddit or a Digg or a Hacker News. You certainly know where you can find lulz-inducing videos and pictures and flowcharts. Geekosystem is not here to disrupt your diet of information, though we think you will find us a worthy and nutritious supplement.

In addition to our spiffy weekly Power Grid, which you can read more about via this FAQ, Geekosystem seeks to give you a unique kind of home and refuge. But we’ll need your help. Above all, we want this to be a discussion and not a talking-down-to, and we want you to talk back, share your expertise, call us out when you think we are being dumb. We will be in the trenches of the comment sections with you. This is the stuff we love and obsess about, and we hope you will come along for the journey.

The Skynet’s the limit.

The Skynet’s the limit indeed. As TechCrunch points out “The site is already getting a vote of confidence from one of the biggest players in the tech space, Microsoft. The tech giant is going to be the exclusive advertiser (for Bing) on Geekosystem for a full two weeks”.

Mediaite wishes only best of luck to our newest member of our growing family. Now go and check out the site.

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment that the term “geek” stopped describing a carnival performer whose act featured biting the head off a live chicken and started describing an intellectual who is overly obsessed with things that, well, intellectuals overly obsess about. But recently, “geek culture” started to connote something even more — something cool, curious, and perhaps most importantly, something that can be really difficult to explain to those who don’t “get it.”

It is from this world that Mediaite founder Dan Abrams will be launching a new site covering geek culture on January 25th, aptly titled “Geekosystem.”

According to Abrams, “when it comes to Internet culture, readers already know where they can go for in-depth technology coverage or cool photos. Our goal is to create a broader interest site that will celebrate and cover everything from technology and science fiction to video games and comics.”

Geekosystem will delve into geek culture with reports and analysis on the myriad aspects of geekdom: from gadgets and video games to comic books and science fiction. The site will merge the content aggregation of popular web culture destinations with the editorial voice of the post-Web 2.0 generation of geek luminaries. The site will be top edited by Robert Quigley, who has proved to be a real standout among the ranks of Mediaite’s stable of contributors.

“Robert has been a star at Mediaite. Not only did he write the story that remains our most viewed post ever, but he is also one of the smartest people about the web that I have ever met,” says Abrams. “Oh, and he is a nationally ranked Scrabble player too, so he knows his words. . . even if they’re short ones.”

The site will be loosely modeled on Mediaite’s content structure — balancing aggregation, reporting and a power grid ranking, though the Geekosystem version will focus less on media types or personalities and more on geek heroes, concepts, and titles. Abrams: “If everyone can rank celebrities or businesspeople, why not do the same for Jules Verne? Or the guy who invented HTML?”

Mediaite is thrilled to have a new descendant, though we’re probably more eager to tease him and pull good-natured pranks. In fact – what’s that on your shirt GeekO? Got you! Welcome to the family!

Mediaite’s two other announced siblings, Styleite and Sports Grid, are expected to launch in late February or early March.

Here’s how we got to this point.

Mediaite, managing editor Colby Hall and associate editor Robert Quigley joined the group “Change Congress” and one of its founders, Prof. Lawrence Lessig, for a crowded bronze medal on “Worst Persons” last night. The crux of the story related to this post from yesterday morning about an Olbermann segment appearing in a Change Congress ad. Here’s Olbermann:

Professor Lessig and his group apparently put together a minute-long video criticizing blue dog Arkansas Democrat Mike Ross and about half of it is taken from my Special Comment of August 3rd. Change Congress never contacted me or us at the network for our permission to use the video, permission they do not have. We’ll be asking them to remove the video. Just as importantly, Mediaite or Mr. Quigley never contacted me or us for comment, in fact their post was the first anybody here had heard about the video. Yet the site had the audacity to write, “It’s not clear if Olbermann explicitly volunteered to be in the ad, he almost certainly could put the kibosh on it if he wanted.” How exactly would I have done that if I didn’t know anything about it? I’ll wait. (long pause)

The post raised questions about the ad and Olbermann’s involvement in it – questions that were answered quickly in an update, with comment from an MSNBC spokesperson. The updated post reflected all the information Olbermann says here. By 1:30pmET, an entirely new post, headlined “MSNBC Demands Political Group Stop Running Unauthorized Olbermann Ad,” was up as the top story of Mediaite. This was more than six hours before Countdown went on-air with old, outdated information. There wasn’t one more “worst” thing occurring in the world?

The argument could be made that Olbermann and his staff didn’t go and check Mediaite after the first ‘audacious’ post…except for what happened on his show just six minutes earlier. In a segment about his favorite topic, Fox News, Olbermann extensively cited an email from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon. An email that was obtained by Mediaite only, and published here exclusively. Other sites had no problem citing the source as Mediaite when discussing the email – but apparently Olbermann didn’t feel the need to give proper credit, or any credit at all. If Countdown were a blog, it would be chastised for the move. Why should a cable news show be held to a different standard?

Olbermann closed with:

Also, you guys should explain how you think you’re a journalism-based website if you close the piece with “we’ve reached out to MSNBC for comment and are awaiting their feedback.” That’s not the way it works, you’re supposed to get the comment first, before you write. Thank you.

Also, if you consider yourself host of a journalism-based cable news show, you’re supposed to cite where you get information. Thank you.

Here’s the “Worst” segment:

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I thought it was only fair to give Gibbs a chance to respond, so I emailed him to see if he had any reaction to the piece. While he said he had “no real response,” and that he was “happy to get the criticism,” he did have a few factual corrections for us. Let’s see how Gibbs’ fact-check stacks up against our double-fact-check.

1. Sarah Palin’s Healthcare Comments – “…Gibbs’ snark yesterday about how ‘you [reporters] cover a lot of process and you cover a lot of — you cover noise and heat and light’ was the wrong kind of dismissal, and did nothing to brush the matter away.”
Gibbs: “On #1, I didn’t brush off Palin yesterday – I responded by using stuff from a GOP Senator calling her accusation nuts.”
Point: Gibbs. While he did make the “heat and light” statement, that was in response to a broad question about messaging. In responding to Palin’s quote, he did cite Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson’s statement that the “death panel” idea was nuts.

2. “Elected Leader” Ahmadinejad?
Point: Mediaite. Gibbs didn’t offer anything on this, and in fact, clarified his statement the day after he made it.

3. Laff-A-Lympics – Gibbs has laughed, or caused laughter, on more than 600 occasions. Singled out was this instance, where he joked that “only in Washington” is $100 million not considered a lot of money, even when compared to the national debt.
Gibbs: “On #3 if that’s a gaffe then so be it, same with #4.”
Point: I’ll give Gibbs #3. Humor is subjective, and Gibbs’s joke was clearly at the expense of free-spending D.C., not the national debt. Besides, I wouldn’t want to discourage Gibbs from occasionally livening up what would otherwise be some intolerably dull briefings. As a former stand-up comic, I’ve got to admire the guy’s timing.

4. Taking on Cheney – Gibbs compared Cheney to Rush Limbaugh, and called him part of the Republican cabal. “When you’re the White House Press Secretary, show a little respect for the former Vice President, even if you disagree with him.”
Gibbs: “On #3 if that’s a gaffe then so be it, same with #4.”
Point: #4 Mediaite. On #4, I’m tempted to call this a push because Cheney did some hitting below the belt of his own, but since Gibbs concedes the point, I’ll take it.

5. Twittergate – “Gibbs’ July 24th statement on C-SPAN that Twitter is blocked on White House computers led to a firestorm of speculation on the Internet.”
Gibbs: “#5 set off a firestorm!? Weird that I missed the firestorm.”
Point: Mediaite 1 – Gibbs’ statement to C-Span was technically accurate – Twitter is blocked on White House computers, except those in the New Media office and they’re in the Executive Office Building, anyway. Since the “firestorm” was mostly caused by the Interwebs panicking that Twitter had been blocked by the White House itself, we removed that item. It was fixed it before he responded to us, but we’ll award a point to Gibbs for observing that there might not have been a firestorm. Also for not being wrong in the first place, though he should know better than to be flip about Twitter. The Interwebs get very excited about Twitter.

6. What Joe Biden “Meant to Say” About Swine Flu -”on April 30th, Gibbs attempted to spin Biden’s infamous “closed container” remarks on swine flu into a handy health advisory. Jake Tapper called him out for not saying anything “remotely close to what [Biden] said.”
Gibbs: “I understand what he said, and I’m telling you what he meant to say.”
Point: Mediaite, since Gibbs conceded this one as well. However, his grilling by Tapper illustrates that he doesn’t exactly get a free ride, either. Half a point to Gibbs.

7. “The Fraternal Order of Police Endorsed McCain” – “When a reporter asked if Obama’s remarks during Gates-Gate would lead to a backlash among police groups, Gibbs responded, ‘I think the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed McCain, if I’m not mistaken.’ It quickly shot to the front page of Drudge. No doubt Gibbs had prepped the response, but it came out at the wrong time in the wrong way, and made Obama’s response to the situation seem vengeful.”
Gibbs: “I love #7 since I was responding to Mark Knoller asking me if the FOP endorsed Obama – if this guy sees it as a gaffe to have said they didn’t then so be it.”
Point: Gibbs. He was asked directly, and answered accurately.

8. Monarchy in the UK – Gibbs unwittingly kicked a hornet’s nest in June when he told reporters that the Obama administration was working to get the Queen to attend D-Day commemorations in Normandy…As it turns out, the White House hadn’t even been in contact with Buckingham Palace; Gibbs was winging it. The Queen did end up going to the commemorations, though.
Gibbs: “On #8, the Queen hadn’t been invited, we were in touch with the Brits and she didn’t come – Prince Charles did.”
Point: Gibbs. He’s on the money here, as Prince Charles did, indeed, fill in for the Queen at the D-Day commemoration. Gibbs gets an extra half-point for pointing out that the White House was, indeed, in touch with the British over the snub.

We’re also awarding Gibbs a full point for confirming that he was the goalkeeper, rather than the goalie, of the North Carolina State Wolfpack, and for calling the game “soccer,” rather than “football.” Unfortunately, we also have to deduct 3 points because he wasn’t a baseball player.

Final score: Robert Gibbs 3, Mediaite 3

EDITOR’S TIEBREAKER: Wow, we feel like Dumbledore after a Quidditch match! However, the tie must be broken – and the record made clear. Since Mediaite erred in asserting that Her Majesty the Queen had attended the D-Day commemoration ceremonies, and since the original posts was about gaffes, and this itself was a gaffe, we hereby award an extra point to Gibbs for being right. Final score: Robert Gibbs 4, Mediaite 3 Gibbs wins – but if the White House tweets this out, then won’t we all be winners? Thanks for playing!

We, the media, have been covering her every weird thumb, geek-shunning, supposed bisexuality, Star Wars-T-shirt wearing, and sexy photo taken.  But on August 4, that all changes, as Asylum bands together with the other manly sites of the Web in an Internet-wide media ban on all things Megan Fox.

The band-of-brothers participating in the boycott include AskMen, Urlesque, YourTango, Double Viking, and other like-minded websites.  The anti-Megan movement has amassed support and publicity through Twitter (check out Mediaite’s TweetFinder for #NoMF below) and coverage of high-traffic entertainment news sites – especially since it gives editors the golden opportunity to publish the token ‘We’ll Miss You, Megan Fox!!!’ slideshow of the starlet’s hottest, probably underdressed moments.

The only question that remains is who or what can possibly replace Megan Fox for a whole 24 hours?! We at Mediaite have come up with a few ideas to hold you over (although we’re already slipping into our fat-day sweatpants, bad-hair-day baseball caps, and baggy T-shirts in preparation for the ugliest day in media ‘Day Without Megan Fox’):

1. Shark Week

At least you can get your fix of fang-ridden and bloody Megan Fox (from her upcoming film Jennifer’s Body), thanks to Discovery Channel’s annual week-long shark-a-thon.  Sink your teeth into THAT.

2. National Scrabble Championship

Can Megan Fox spell ‘sexy’? Probably.  But Scrabble wunderkind and Mediaite intern Robert Quigley can run circles around her in a triple-word-score smackdown.  Fun fact: SEXY is worth 42 points with a triple-word-score.

3. Check Out Mediaite’s SEX WATCH

Special appearances include Kate Winslet’s rack, porn stars, and bikini battles! Oh my…

On May 27th, two days after I graduated from college, I began my internship with Mediaite. That morning, on a glass table in the living room of Dan’s townhouse, I saw the two faces of the beast that would consume my waking hours for the next month-and-a-half.

No, not Colby Hall! How dare you! Anyone who writes a biography of Kobe Bryant is hardly a “beast.” I am talking, of course, about the Power Grid, Mediaite’s comprehensive ranking system for media personalities.

That morning, I saw a mockup made by Rex Sorgatz, our site designer. The mockup looked a lot like the Grid as you see it today: a sleek array of faces moving up and down, with ranks and statistics galore. Then, I saw the Power Grid as it actually existed: a Google Doc listing the employers and job descriptions of about 900 media professionals. In the coming few weeks, the Mediaite team would add almost 600 new people, the product of brainstorming sessions, scoured mastheads, our friends incredulously sputtering, say, “how could you forget Carson Daly?” (or “how could you forget me?”). Next to every name we had and every name we hadn’t yet thought of, there were countless empty rows to be filled in with URLs and statistics, all eventually to be fed to our custom-designed console and digested by our proprietary ranking algorithm. That’s where I came in. That’s where we came in.

Not surprisingly, entering Wikipedia pages, Twitter accounts, and four to six oft-obscure statistics—and finding and cropping photos for good measure—for 1500 people takes a lot of hours and tears. Luckily, Mediaite has a tireless, overcaffeinated corps of interns with a lot of time and plentiful tear ducts. I like to think of us as a “band of brothers,” even though Arielle is a girl.

Anyone can fill 12,500 or so boxes with words and numbers, provided they are crazy, but the question remains: Why? What are you accomplishing? Though the Power Grid has so far been wildly popular, it has caught a bit of flack from the likes of Jeff Bercovici, who wrote that it was “perhaps the stupidest [power list] yet” and “designed badly.” Does the Power Grid suck?

No, it doesn’t.

The proof is in the pudding: I think that the top five people in each category—the Mediaite 60—is a pretty compelling list. There are, of course, some surprises that might not have popped up on a purely editorial list. Is Ezra Klein really the #5 Print/Online reporter? I wouldn’t have guessed it, and I don’t really believe it now, though I like his writing a lot. But the whole point of turning control over to a ranking algorithm is to let yourself be surprised, and to try to learn what you can from the surprises.

There is still a lot that we can and will do to improve the Power Grid. We are missing some people who deserve to be in here—email us here if you are one or can think of any—and there are bound to be a few typos in the system that affect the rankings being calculated.

More excitingly, over the next few months we are planning to roll out new metrics, new categories of people to be ranked, and new features for the Power Grid. It’s going to keep getting more engaging, more accurate, and more interactive. You can e-mail us here if there are any features you want to see in the Power Grid of the future.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some data entry to do.

Robert Quigley is an editorial intern at Mediaite.