Quote on this breaking news, directly from Sheila: "I look forward to once again having a reason to sit in a coffeeshop for hours and hours with my laptop." Yea!

In an email sent out to their daily email subscribers, two-time Gawker editor Choire Sicha revealed a backdated post that wouldn't appear on the front page of the site to otherwise uninitiated readers.

So this is a special Weekend Edition Email to thank you for your patronage. Why? Well, this week, on July 30, 2009, a person residing in (or visiting!) the glorious town of Austin, Texas clicked through from somewhere (perhaps from one of your Twitter accounts, dear reader!) to view a post (and then depart for Internet places unknown) and, in doing so, became our millionth visitor:

http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/one-million-served

(That's a backdated secret post, so that it didn't appear on our front page.)

This lucky Windows user, wrapping up the end of his or her workday at 5:30 p.m. local time, or perhaps just waking up, and getting ready for the roller derby, or maybe, well, who knows: who is shim? What time does hermself wake up? We may never know....

Now, Sitemeter is notoriously wacky as a traffic counter, as you probably know, so, don't worry, we don't attach too much significance to this number. But it's a big round number! How exciting! It kinda makes me feel like Ray Kroc.

The Awl launched to much excitement a few months ago: an interview with Vanity Fair's site, and posts from MediaBistro, like this one, in which Choire talks about how he doesn't look at his own traffic!

Has the press' lovefest led to strong traffic?

Sicha, for one, has no idea. "You know, I have actually *never looked* at our traffic," he emailed FishbowlNY.com this morning. "I leave that in David Cho's capable hands; he's our business guy, and that stuff is his problem. I am just trying to have a good time, and that itself is our stated goal."

Balk, Sicha, and their numerous contributors - who count plenty of Gawker Media past and present writers as among their numbers - look to be enjoying themselves, as they recently called this company the "Goldman Sachs of the Internet," (which is funny, because I'm still broke) and reportedly had their site crash due to an overwhelming influx of traffic. In the aforementioned email, they also announced a special new contributor who's "much better" than Ed Koch.

Meanwhile, this blog took note of nearly anti-celebrity-beat site The Awl's Michael Jackson-911-call link in a passive swipe, and before that, Nick Denton once took note of their content layout.

The Awl's now at a million hits and Denton's busy minting his own currency or something, and unlike Sicha, doesn't own any pets. Yet. "Congratulations" to all parties involved.

One Million Served [The Awl]

Right! There are other Gawker Media alum who have been blogging away in other places: The former Defamer crew have resuscitated Movieline and ex-Gawker writer Sheila McClear, is keeping ASSME.org well-stocked with contributors writing about living through this shitty media economy.

People screwed by NYC, in other words. The book, which he hopes to finish in a year, "will follow a group of 20-somethings as they try to make their lives in a city that doesn't work the way it once did."

"For me, what the recession for young working people reminds me of is HIV in the early 90s, when my generation of gay men decided there wasn't much of a future," Mr. Sicha said. "I feel like I hear from people now, and they're like, 'fuck tomorrow!' Which seems completely reasonable to me. And whether that's based on a real understanding of the economy or on what we're getting through the filter of the media, it doesn't matter– it's a completely appropriate response to the moment we're in."

So Choire will be writing the definitive account of broke ass modern New York (and he needs four subjects: fameballs, email him immediately!). Along with the whisperwhisperwhisper alleged secret project with Balk that we cannot stop hearing about these days, this will keep him busy until the recession blows over. Fancy! He tells us, "It was either this or start some stupid new blog for Nick Denton!"

Choire Sicha has always been the smart one. [NYO. Pic: Flickr]

Still, if we'd known repurposing other people's content, whether on Twitter, Tumblr, Tumblr or Tumblr, was a fast track to literally tens of thousands of dollars in publishing money, we'd have jumped on that trend sooner.

As opposed to what we're doing now, which is, uh, totally different.

(Top pic via Nick Douglas)

Because it sounds somehow even lazier than making a book out of your mom's email messages, a scheme hatched up, perhaps not coincidentally, by another Gawker writer.

Douglas insists the work is backbreaking — "reading a thousand jokes is like watching five hours of porn" — but he's already automated the process of collecting submissions and permissions. Those who make it into the book get no royalties, but a free copy of the work ensures they at least won't have to pay to see their own content in printed format.

So we've seen blog books, internet cat-picture books, a family email book and now the first book collection of tweets. Remember when the internet was the desperate medium, and had to steal its content from the incumbent players, rather than everything working the other way around? Those sure were the days.

It selectively mentions websites that aren't really blogs; ignores actual blogs that contradict its thesis; fails to do original reporting to check basic facts about people and comes to an easy, trite conclusion. Which is outrageous, because that sort of intellectually dishonest pontificating belongs to us bloggers, Doree's mom excluded. Seriously, Newsweek, stop it. There are only so many book deals left.

[Doree, Newsweek]

Actually, I didn't rate any of those books. I assume the stars are the aggregate rating from other people who have read them. If I were going to rate them, they're all very good, though The Loved One is not my favorite Waugh. As for my boyfriend's book, it's excellent—five stars—as is his previous book, The Accidental Connoisseur. (See? Even people who aren't sleeping with him think so!)

Also, the Flaubert is hilarious, but a little hard to find, which probably is why no one has rated it yet.