the fate of newspaper comics is uncertain, but guessable. Their entertainment value had already been supplanted before the Internet eviscerated their delivery mechanism. But the Internet may also be the cartoon’s salvation – from Dilbert (likely the first and last major cartoon to jump from the Internet to newsprint) to XKCD to Penny Arcade to Cyanide and Happiness, cartoons are flourishing online.

We come here not to praise the new cartoon, however, but to eulogize its predecessor.

the aughts

As you may have heard, Gawker was recently named the 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.