Denton goes to the bench
Back in history, my children, when Nick Denton hired Elizabeth Spiers to be the first Gawker, he declared, to me anyway, that he didn’t want journalists, tainted as they were by their old ways. Well, note now his hiring notice at Gawker. Now he’s seeing someone with “at least two years of experience as a reporter at a daily or weekly newspaper, covering either crime news, business, or media and culture (yes, a print background is an advantage).” But he adds another requirement: “A reporter who appreciates the discipline of newspaper traditions, but chafes under them.”
There’s a sea change in that. Gawker and all blogs could make a go of it at first just commenting, but as Nick points out in his posting, there is a value in original reporting: “But the web—other blogs, search engines and social network sites—increasingly rewards original items.” So the two worlds do converge.
But that doesn’t mean Nick is doing things the classical way, or only that way; there’ll be no 5,000-word takeouts and weeks-long task force projects, he says. Here he’s putting out his formula for what we’ve called half-baked items, which he explained at the Murdoch newspaper confab we both attended as a blogging reporter saying to his audience, “Here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t know. What do you know?”
At its most elevated, the new Gawker hire may experiment with a new form of reporting, unique to online, in which ideas are floated, appeals made to the readers, and the story assembled over the course of several items, from speculation, and tips from users.
I’ll take all the fun out of that, as perfessors do, and label that networked journalism.
(via Adrian Monck. Disclosure: I’m a friend of Nick’s and was on the board of his last company, Moreover.)
Tags: gawker, journalism
December 14th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
I hope it amounts to more than corroborating celebrity sightings.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:14 am
[...] And it seems that I’m not the only blogger interested in exploring a more journalistic use of the blog platform. Nick Denton set out to hire a journalist to be the new editor of Gawker.com, along with a journalist reporter. Jeff Jarvis called this, tellingly, “going to the bench.” [...]
December 17th, 2007 at 11:27 am
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Denton goes to the bench (tags: buildtheecho bloggers_vs_journalism) [...]
December 17th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
New models of journalism and the Geosign story…
If you’ve followed the Geosign story on this blog, you know there’s been no shortage of contradictory opinions, and some of you have let it be known you found this whole exercise rather half-baked, which it is indeed as I’ll let Jeff Jarvis of Buzz …
December 17th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
But: I do remember that Nick was hiring bloggers and snagged someone away from Columbia’s J-school: That doesn’t mean the person was a student and finished and went straight to Gawker, or that the blogger was a student at Columbia and dropped out to join Gawker. She had just been accepted and Nick proclaimed that if she accepted it and went to Columbia - she would be spoiled. He wasn’t looking for journalists.
I find it interesting that the times have changed.
Disclaimer: I always hated Gawker - I refuse to read it. Nothing against anyone personally - I’m just not one for unproductive and snarky writing.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
[...] And it seems that I’m not the only blogger interested in exploring a more journalistic use of the blog platform. Nick Denton set out to hire a journalist to be the new editor of Gawker.com, along with a journalist reporter. Jeff Jarvis called this, tellingly, “going to the bench.†[...]