Soundbite: Nick Denton Reveals The Secret Behind Gawker’s Biggest Successes

“One interesting thing about biggest recent Gawker Media scoops — Pink phone (Gizmodo, yesterday), Scientology marketing vid, Erin Andrews peephole, Microsoft tablet, Josh Hamilton falls off wagon and McSteamy threeway. All the breakout stories revolve around pictures. No surprise to anyone from TV or the celebrity magazine world, I’m sure.”

— Gawker publisher Nick Denton twitters about the common thread linking Gawker’s more recent powerhouse posts.

Perhaps the updated adage should be: a picture’s worth a thousand words, a million clicks, and lots of ad dollars. (If you’re interested in more about Gawker’s biggest traffic numbers it’s been previously covered here and here.) Also, in at least one case, a million dollar lawsuit — yesterday Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart sued Gawker.com for $1 million for posting a sex tape of the couple with former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche. (Side note: Does that seem low to anyone else? If you’re going to go to the trouble to launch a lawsuit don’t you want to aim a bit higher? A million will barely cover lawyers costs in the unlikely chance this case makes it to court. Who knows, maybe they’ll also end up opting for flowers instead.)

Either way Denton doesn’t sound too put out by it all, he tells the Times‘ David Carr:

“Gawker is a relatively unfettered journalistic enterprise. If we weren’t ever sued by embarrassed story subjects, I’d wonder whether we were performing our function.”

Decoder asked if he paid for the tape: “Well, obviously we paid our contributor (and from the traffic, you can suppose quite handsomely!)…I take all suits seriously — though I confess to finding the simple cease and desist from the Church of Scientology last year the most intimidating.”