Nick Denton, Publisher of Gawker Media is worth a lot of money. He didn’t get that way from making dumb moves. Even so, he raised a few eyebrows with his recent announcement that he would part with Wonkette, GridSkipper and Idolatar.
Here’s his reasoning:
Everybody says that the internet is special; that advertising is still moving away from print and TV; and Gawker sites are still growing in traffic by about 90% a year, way faster than the web as a whole. But it would be naive to think that we can merely power through an advertising recession. We need to concentrate our energies, and the time of Chris Batty’s sales group, on the sites with the greatest potential for audience and advertising.
The dozen sites that remain represent some 97% or our 228m pageviews per month, and an even higher proportion of our growth and advertising revenue.
Idolatar was purchased by Buzznet, a music-focused web and social network.
Gridskipper is being taken over by Curbed, the network founded by Lockhart Steele, in which Gawker Media is a shareholder.
Wonkette is being spun off to its managing editor, Ken Layne.
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