News hit the wires today that we're letting go of three titles: Idolator, Wonkette, and Gridskipper. You can bet these brands will be missed, but the individual losses will have negligible effect on the network as a whole. VP of Sales Chris Batty advises, "The company is organizing around [its] best opportunities" for marketers and "this is unmistakably good news."

Below some key facts on the Gawker Media network as it continues on today and then, head on over to Gawker for a Letter from the Publisher, Nick Denton.

GAWKER MEDIA KEY FACTS

* A dozen sites, Gizmodo first launched in August 2002, most recent, io9, in January 2008
* Gawker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, Jalopnik, Deadspin, Defamer, Jezebel, Valleywag, io9, Consumerist, Fleshbot
* A record 18 "Bloggie" nominations in 2008, way more than any other blog collective (one of those was for Idolator)
* Audience of 29.7m unique visitors a month for the whole network, up 82% at annualized rate
* Each individual site has at least 1m uniques or, in the case of io9, soon will
* Pageviews of 227m in March — 219m if you take out the three sites being spun out — up 89% on a year earlier (Sitemeter)
* For those who measure these things, Gawker is the web's leading independent blog group