Emerging media
The thing about what’s happening here is that Denton is actually changing Gawker from the ground up. Unless I'm imagining it, he has said in the past that he wants it to operate more like a social networking site. And like, he’s done it. He has decided that content -– the stuff written by the people he pays -- is no more important to the site than the commenters and what they say underneath each post. And it appears that the experiment is working!!
Just look at his “Ask Julia Allison” thing from last night – all he did was tell everyone who reads Gawker that Julia would be answering readers’ questions in the comments field of an “article” posted early in the day about the special event. The thing got over 70,000 pageviews – why? Because people kept refreshing the thread while Julia was doing it, hoping someone has said something funny or that Julia has made an appearance. It doesn’t matter why they did this –- they were captivated, and their captivation made them do something that translates into money for whomever runs the website that has succeeded in making them feel this way.
Taken together, the comments threads on Gawker are no less active than what I was used to when I posted on message boards back in high school. And it was the same thing –- if there was an exciting thread, especially if I was involved in it, I’d refresh it a million times, just like I check my email over and over again when I’m expecting something. In other words Denton has turned what used to be a news site into a social networking site. These are no longer just discrete articles meant to be read/appreciated on their own, but rather strategically conceived catalysts for discussion.
Some people don’t even read the “content” anymore. Tonight, one commenter wrote in a thread about 200 deep as of midnight that featured a lot of regulars taking shots at the new guy in charge: “I've been reading this site for about 2 years, not for the articles or the stunts, I come for the commenter's great responses. Denton you better not scare them away or you will have one less reader.”
Yes, all this means Gawker does not resemble a magazine or a newspaper as much as it used to, but so what? It is neither of those things and its ambition is not to recreate their model on the web. In fact, Denton’s Gawker is not even really a “blog” as we’ve come to understand them so far. In a way it’s a new form altogether, what he’s going for, since it’s not a combination of any two preexisting ones.
This is why I don’t think it’s so bad what he’s doing. Because everything is still up in the air w/r/t whatever this new form is: we haven’t quite articulated what its purpose is, what it means to do it well, what it means to do it with integrity, etc. With newspapers and magazines, we know pretty much reflexively that certain things are corruptions/compromises. Like, we believe that when a magazine cuts articles so that there’s more room for ads, something is being lost -– the point of a magazine is to have articles in it, and if you’re replacing them with ads, you’ve taken the first steps toward betraying/abandoning the heart of the project.
That is a familiar narrative to us –- we are told that everything in the world is being gradually corrupted in this way -- but maybe it doesn’t apply to whatever Denton is building. Since we don’t know yet what the point of it is, it is not really sacrilege at all for him to say “page views are the most important thing and the content doesn’t matter as long as people are clicking and discussing.” If the purpose of the content has nothing to do with “quality” as we understand it but its ability to spark discussion/activity on the site, then increasing page views by any means necessary should be your main objective when you’re writing posts.
Not saying that I think it would be fun or rewarding or fulfilling to write for such a venue. In fact I think there would inevitably be something masochistic about it, since all your decisions as a writer would be informed/guided by the conceit that you are essentially unimportant. Or at the very least not as important as other writers who work for traditional outlets, whose work exists in a vacuum, for its own sake. It would be hard to shake the feeling that you are nothing but a host designed only to attract parasites.
See also QuarterLife, a show/social networking site.
Just look at his “Ask Julia Allison” thing from last night – all he did was tell everyone who reads Gawker that Julia would be answering readers’ questions in the comments field of an “article” posted early in the day about the special event. The thing got over 70,000 pageviews – why? Because people kept refreshing the thread while Julia was doing it, hoping someone has said something funny or that Julia has made an appearance. It doesn’t matter why they did this –- they were captivated, and their captivation made them do something that translates into money for whomever runs the website that has succeeded in making them feel this way.
Taken together, the comments threads on Gawker are no less active than what I was used to when I posted on message boards back in high school. And it was the same thing –- if there was an exciting thread, especially if I was involved in it, I’d refresh it a million times, just like I check my email over and over again when I’m expecting something. In other words Denton has turned what used to be a news site into a social networking site. These are no longer just discrete articles meant to be read/appreciated on their own, but rather strategically conceived catalysts for discussion.
Some people don’t even read the “content” anymore. Tonight, one commenter wrote in a thread about 200 deep as of midnight that featured a lot of regulars taking shots at the new guy in charge: “I've been reading this site for about 2 years, not for the articles or the stunts, I come for the commenter's great responses. Denton you better not scare them away or you will have one less reader.”
Yes, all this means Gawker does not resemble a magazine or a newspaper as much as it used to, but so what? It is neither of those things and its ambition is not to recreate their model on the web. In fact, Denton’s Gawker is not even really a “blog” as we’ve come to understand them so far. In a way it’s a new form altogether, what he’s going for, since it’s not a combination of any two preexisting ones.
This is why I don’t think it’s so bad what he’s doing. Because everything is still up in the air w/r/t whatever this new form is: we haven’t quite articulated what its purpose is, what it means to do it well, what it means to do it with integrity, etc. With newspapers and magazines, we know pretty much reflexively that certain things are corruptions/compromises. Like, we believe that when a magazine cuts articles so that there’s more room for ads, something is being lost -– the point of a magazine is to have articles in it, and if you’re replacing them with ads, you’ve taken the first steps toward betraying/abandoning the heart of the project.
That is a familiar narrative to us –- we are told that everything in the world is being gradually corrupted in this way -- but maybe it doesn’t apply to whatever Denton is building. Since we don’t know yet what the point of it is, it is not really sacrilege at all for him to say “page views are the most important thing and the content doesn’t matter as long as people are clicking and discussing.” If the purpose of the content has nothing to do with “quality” as we understand it but its ability to spark discussion/activity on the site, then increasing page views by any means necessary should be your main objective when you’re writing posts.
Not saying that I think it would be fun or rewarding or fulfilling to write for such a venue. In fact I think there would inevitably be something masochistic about it, since all your decisions as a writer would be informed/guided by the conceit that you are essentially unimportant. Or at the very least not as important as other writers who work for traditional outlets, whose work exists in a vacuum, for its own sake. It would be hard to shake the feeling that you are nothing but a host designed only to attract parasites.
See also QuarterLife, a show/social networking site.
posted by Leon at 5:58 PM
1 Comments:
When you put it like that, I guess my only legitimate beef with this new form is that I'm not interested in reading it and participating in it, and I don't really understand why anyone else would be, either. It's like watching something bored in a cage gnawing away at itself.
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