Nick Denton is a soon-to-be-over-50 pussyboy, a manipulative shit, and a turd-burglingJew from hell. The founder and chief dildo of Gawker Media, he really, really hates it when anyone mocks or criticizes him, so we're happy to fill in for the cowardice of "mainstream media" and his former employees, who are welcome to anally-raep themselves with their nondisclosure agreements. He (WAS) worth $100 million personally, much of which is sunk into a vast collection of diamond-studded buttplugs. He spent several years writing boring material for the Financial Times, which seems to qualify him to be an Internet billionaire.
"I went to the Gawker bankruptcy party. Gawker made a lot of careers and paid web writers badly when everyone else paid writers nothing. Oh and then this was on a phone pole so I really can't figure out what is happening in this world right now."
And now it looks as if Hulkster and Peter Thiel are gonna get everything. Lol.
Nick has always lied. About everything. You don't build a $300 million advertising conduit and shitburst overnight, nor without making enemies. He would put Javascript-controlled twitching animated ads on your mom's cuntlips if he could. He knows his audience---drooling morons sitting at desks in corporate offices, goofing off on their employer's dime and looking up the most ADHD bullshit they can find. As the TOW article says, he's been buying up competing blogs and shutting them down or folding them into his autistic empire of crap. A massive redesign in 2011 caused much lol and buttfail, and as of today when you visit Gawker, it tries to load 280 different Javascripts from various advertisers, causing your broadband connection to shit itself. So thank him.
He and his whores have been in a butt-snarfing contest with VICE for the last couple of years, and GamerGate was graet for his site stats, as the trolls and the warriors of lol went after him with bitchforks. Despite being "an obscure blog operator", now everyone hates him. Nice! The shitwiping of GG and 4chan supposedly led to his (possibly nonexistent) niece attempting suicide, amongst other lulzy turds. [1][2]
Here comes the bride
The wedding photo Nick fought so hard to keep private
He got gay-married in 2013, so throw some rice at your computer screen. And the King of All Social Media banned any use of social media at the nuptials, because the public screamer is a "private citizen" who "values his privacy".
A more specific complaint: the salaries at Vice are low. Very low. Even as Shane Smith watches his millions increase, his employees are pissed that they can hardly afford rent in Brooklyn. One intern two years ago was excited to receive a full time position—until the company offered him a salary of $20K. Employees who have worked there full time within the past two years say that salaries well under $30K are routine for "producers." (One such producer said that after waiting in vain for more than a year for a raise to push their salary up to $30K, they left Vice last year after seeing executives spend what appeared to be thousands of dollars on drugs for a company party.) Editors who worked on Vice's verticals (music, video, fashion, sports, etc.) tell us they started at salaries of $24K-$26K, sometimes rising to a whopping $30K after six months or a year of good performance. For editors who run verticals, salaries are "about $40K," said one ex-employee. And that's at the upper end— "I can tell you that as one of the higher level editors of one of the highest trafficked verticals, I make less than 40k a year," another editor told us.
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—--written by an equally-fucked Brooklyn hipster, lol
VICE's Shane Smith, who really isn't much different from Nick (apart from preferring the cuntjuices of young virgins over cock), responded with this burst of love and affection.
“
In addition to this compensation package, all VICE employees who meet a length-of-service criterion of two years are automatically enrolled in the company’s Stock Appreciation Rights (SAR) program, a stock-based compensation plan whereby employees receive payments based on the value of VICE stock in a liquidity event. The VICE SAR program was launched in late 2013, with long-term employees grandfathered into the program and granted SAR options that recognized their dedication and excellence for the early growth years of the company. As VICE rises in value, so do the value of the SARs, and all employees in the program benefit. This is, of course, 100 percent contrary to Gawker’s assertion in their smear job. But then again, since when did Gawker actually care about the truth?
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—--by persons unknown within the VICE turd factory
And thus did the lulz begin. If you can call this dogshit lulzy. Having a sip from the Gowanus Canal would be more entertaining. And tastier. [3][4](archive)[5]
Videos lol
Peter Kafka interviews Denton
Denton on The Today Show
Previous Video | Next Video
MOAR
All of Nick's butt slaves hate him. And he hates himself, as you can probably tell from his blog. So, naturally, one of them took a screencap of his private Facebook and leaked it (again). Yes, the God of Facebook Reposting has himself a completely private FB that no one except his butt-buddies can see.
Nick responded by posting the following butthurt rant, wherein he implicitly threatens to murder whoever leaked it whenever he finds out who he is, before deleting his account. So long sucker.
"We have a reputation for being snarky and jaded and without principle here, and that's a little dated," Denton told us last night. "I'm a little tired of it."
After all that shit, at the end of 2014 Nick decided to GTFO of Dodge, though he's still the "CEO" of the "thing" he built. Then in June 2015, his "happy happy employees" voted to unionize. Dey wub him so much.
"He's a COWARD"
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Gawker Media has succeeded thus far for only two reasons: Nick’s laudable and mostly universal willingness to let writers publish what they choose (until they are fired, anyway) and, of course, the writers intelligence and commitment to the truth, even at great personal cost. Could Gawker Media have been a larger, more financially successful company? Absolutely. There were a lot of business opportunities missed because Denton was too afraid to take a risk. Does it still have a chance of surviving as a small, independent publisher with modest profits? It will be hard, but it is possible. But it will not happen without a unity of vision that its leadership has historically not provided, or without the environment to experiment, to grow, and to speak openly and honestly about the financials and strategy of the company. (Or, at least, it won’t happen with you all still employed.) That has been impossible until today, but you have just given yourselves a chance to push back against the infighting and paranoia that has hobbled the organization for its entire existence.
Why didn’t Kinja work? For the same reason that most attempts to grow and mature Gawker Media have never worked: For someone who trades in bravado, Nick Denton is, perversely, a coward.
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Wait, there's more!
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Those of us in management spent a large portion of last year in brainstorming sessions where Denton explained his desire to leave a legacy. That legacy, implicitly, was Kinja. (Not Gawker Media, strangely.) This is the Denton you’re toiling for today: a man who wants to be better than he was before, both as a businessman, leader, and (presumably) a human being, but who is fundamentally pessimistic about trusting other people. Hence, a ceaseless paranoia that encourages and rewards employees who gossip to him about their peers, or perpetuates cynical (and cyclical!) editorial strategies that manifest in sites like Valleywag, which existed entirely as a lever to be used in transactions with Valley companies. (“I am no longer feared when I walk into Silicon Valley boardrooms” was the response I was given when attempting to shut down Valleywag last year.) It’s this paranoia that prompts the emotionally fueled dismissals of employees when they “seem stressed.” (Hi!)
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The douchebag himself responds:
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As for your other more personal criticism, I don’t want to ignore it completely. I am sorry that things ended badly between us, and that I didn’t reach out to you earlier this year. I miss talking with you about product and political ideas. I hope, in the interests of the colleagues we both care about, that we can focus on the matters we both care about.
I’m proud of the Editorial operation under Tommy Craggs and the Politburo. The Gawker sites are better than ever. Jim Cooke’s team has given stories the illustration they deserve. The new Splash should give those illustrations, and visuals from the coolest advertisers, more room to dazzle. The energy on the Fourth Floor is good. These are some of the greatest writers and thinkers you know; they’re the greatest that I know.
In this age, we live as subscribers and employees of hollow conglomerates, and data points in the algorithms that govern the soulless networks that now dominate the web.
As Max Read says: With each new trend in online media, the web gets marginally more stupid and obnoxious. Creators of news, increasingly driven by companies whose only real mission is to survive the algorithmic edicts of the dopamine reward dispensaries masquerading as platforms that they write on, all revert to the glib and hollow.
There is a haven for free thought. Only Gawker Media is independent. It is uncompromised. It is unique. It is a human story in an age of machine-driven content churn.
And then? And then?? Univision, the buyer of the shreds of Gawker Media, offered to pay Nick to not blog. Yes Bunky, they're paying him not to do his usual assholings on the Interwebs. How much? $200,000 PER YEAR. [7][8][9]
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Gawker paid Denton $500,000 per year, according to The Wall Street Journal. Denton may have to use some of that to pay the $15,000 per month that he owes on the mortgage of his SoHo condo, as well as $3,400 in condo fees.
HuffPost's Gabriel Arana wrote that Gawker was gay-shaming Geithner by publicizing the claims from the male escort, whom the site also described as a "gay porn star." The company's managing partnership voted 5-1 to remove the post. Executive Editor Tommy Craggs was the dissenting voice. After Denton made the announcement, investigations editor John Cook tweeted that he thought the decision was a mistake. However, in his Friday post, Denton said that some of the site's "own writers, proud to work at one of the only independent media companies, are equally appalled." Still, Denton signaled that Gawker, which is currently fighting a $100 million lawsuit for publishing a sex tape involving the wrestler Hulk Hogan, would continue to report on the private lives of famous figures. "I believe this public mood reflects a growing recognition that we all have secrets, and they are not all equally worthy of exposure," Denton wrote. "I can’t defend yesterday’s story as I can our coverage of Bill O’Reilly, Hillary Clinton or Hulk Hogan." He acknowledged that a "former Treasury Secretary’s brother does not rise to the level that our flagship site should be publishing."
(archive) Which is fucking hilarious, as Gawker itself was being sued in a class action by a group of its own former "interns"
