If my name seems sort of familiar, this is because Gawker once blogged about my dumb Internet videos a long time ago. Never in a million years did I expect that one day it would be me blogging about other people's dumb Internet videos and misspelling their names. Only in America.

Can't think of much else to say, really. I'm just your normal, everyday half-Chinese-half-Jew trying to make his way in our increasingly interconnected world. Last year, I graduated from the communist training camp known as Reed College—located in the heart of the People's Republic of Portland, Oregon. After a few months of making poor life choices, I moved to New York for an internship at a famous Internet magazine known for upending conventional wisdom (HINT: It rhymes with "Plate Gagazine".) When I'm not blogging, I enjoy comedy writing, weeping and drinking beer. My mom thinks Gawker is "too mean." My powers are increasing, and I want to use them to please you.

(If you are so inclined, you can follow me on Twitter. Sometimes I tweet when I'm drunk!)

We're changing up Gawker's night shift a bit. Ryan Tate was an expert one-man band when he established night editor position, working from night til dawn, monitoring night-time television and the morning's breaking news. It may be too much to expect one person to duplicate him, so we're going to try splitting the gig into two half-shifts:

Early shift Early is relative, of course, as it'll run from, say, 8pm to midnight EST, Sunday through Thursday. Much of what we post on the site during that time is based on what's happening on TV, so the focus of the gig would be monitoring news and chat shows and finding clips and posting commentary as it airs. Of course, news can happen any time — juicy tips arrive around the clock, old media orgs are still fond of posting their biggest storiess at night — this person needs to be able to handle breaking news.

Late shift This shift would run from around 2am to 6am EST, also Sunday through Thursday. These hours are grueling hours for someone in New York, so it would be particularly well-suited for someone in the U.K., Australia or the West Coast. The main focus is making sure that Gawker has a jump on the major stories of the day by the time we're waking up in NYC. Writing experience is vital, as is a strong voice and news judgment.

If you're interested in either position, please email me at gabriel@gawker.com with a convincing argument for why you're right for the job. Be sure to say which shift you're applying for.

Image via DbS Count Zero's flickr

Anyone who's auditioned successfully to become a commenter (see below) or anyone who's received an email invitation from us. The comment system is invitation-only because our editors want to spend more time providing new content and less time moderating comment threads.

2. How can I become a commenter?

To become a commenter, you need to audition, which means leaving at least one comment on the site. To do this, type an interesting, substantial or highly amusing comment in the comment box anywhere on the site. Click "Share" and then click the "New user?" link on the next screen. On the following screen, enter your desired username and password and click "Register". Your comment will be received but won't appear until (and if) we approve it.

We only approve the comments we love - so make sure you're adding something of quality to the post. If we approve your comment, your username and password will be activated and you'll be able to login and comment freely from then on (or at least until you get banned).

Tips for auditioning to become a commenter: First, leaving multiple high quality comments on different threads using your newly created username increases your chances of having your comments - and therefore your username - approved. Second, if a comment from a newly created username doesn't show up on the site, that's because it's still awaiting approval. There's no need to submit the same comment multiple times or report this as a bug.

We value intelligent contributions, good grammar, and not feeding the trolls. Proper use of punctuation, capitalization and time taken in typing will earn you extra points. Ignoring any of the above will subtract considerably.

If you want to comment, show your stuff - make it a worthy addition to the thread. "Firsts!", "yays" and "nays" will be summarily ignored. See Lifehacker's Guide To Weblog Comments for suggestions on how to start.

3. Why is my comment displaying when I'm not an approved commenter?

We will sometimes approve a comment we like without approving the commenter. This means an individual comment of yours may be published while you are still auditioning. Take this as a good sign! If we like one of your comments, we might just like you enough to approve you as a commenter in the future.

4. Can I comment anonymously?

Yes, you can. Our comment system is designed so that you can register and post anonymously. We won't even know who you are.

Here's how to ensure that you register anonymously. When you create your username, choose one that's unrelated to your real identity. Then, add an anonymous nickname in your user profile. We won't be able to link your username/nickname with your offline self.

We do ask for an email address so that we can email you a new password in case you forget it. To preserve your anonymity, use an anonymous Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Hotmail account. Or, if you want to remain totally under the radar, and you're good at remembering passwords, leave the email field blank.

5. Can I be banned from commenting?

Yes, if your comments are excessively self-promotional, obnoxious, or even worse, boring. There will be no warning, and no appeal.

6. Can I comment without registering?

Yes, you can submit a comment using an email address instead of a registered account. To do this, type your comment in the comment box anywhere on the site and click "Share". On the next screen, enter your email address and click "Submit". Then check your inbox for an email asking you to verify your comment. Your comment will still be subject to editorial team approval before appearing. Please also note that the first half of your email address will be used in your commenter name (jane.doe@gmail.com will result in the username jane.doe or jane.doe001, for instance), so remember to use an address that does not reference your identify if you wish to remain anonymous.

7. What does it mean to be a "starred commenter"?

Gawker Media blogs have a tiered commenting system. We want to feature the best and most informative comments. You can click here for more information on how this works.

8. What are Gawker Open Forums?

Commenters now have space beyond moderated posts to start their own discussions, investigations, arguments, and hold court with friends and foes. Have something to say that's off-topic? An insider's perspective that needs more room to vent? A bone to pick with a post? Want to live-blog an event on your own? Take it "outside" - utilize our new #hashtag feature.

Create your own forum within the blogs by adding "/tag/yourtaghere/" to the original site URL, or by entering your unique "#yourtag" into the text field at the top of the blog, followed immediately by your first comment for that page. Then hit the big "Share" button.

You can also contribute commentary related to the tags that appear on published posts. Simply click on the relevant tag link, enter your comment in the text field at the top, then click "Share." When adding to a pre-existing page, you do not have to include the #tag in your comment.

Don't forget that any content you post in #tag pages or tell us in #tips will be public. Forums and tips that we particularly like will receive front-page promotion.

Our video editor Richard Blakeley is looking for interns who can ferret out the newsworthy, entertaining and absurd moments from the hours of infotainment that fills our DVRs every day in exchange for resume-enhancing video editing experience.

The schedule is flexible but requires a minimum of 15 hours a week over the course of four months and you must be able to come work in our NYC-based office. College internship credit available to those who qualify. Please email Richard at tvinternship@gawker.com and convince him how much you love TV. No attachments, please.

Photo via YivaS's flickr.

Our deepest apologies for making your Friday go by that much slower. If you're in New York, today is a really nice day to take a long break outside somewhere.

There have been a number of other tech complaints — the login button not showing up in the menu toolbar, other browers not playing nicely with the new comments, images not showing up in our RSS feeds — and I'm assured that new servers are being purchased, code rewritten and other tech things that I do not understand are being done to iron things out. It might take the weekend to get fixed, so I appreciate you bearing with us.

But aside from all that, for those of you who have been able to get into comments, what do you think of the first 24 hours of the new hierarchy? So far, we've been pleasantly surprised by the absence of an uprising aside from the general griping that any redesign seems to foster.

The biggest source of complaints seems to be the folks who are unhappy with the whole notion of hierarchy as instituting a caste system. I don't want to refute that notion entirely — exclusivity has its own mystique — but I think some clarification is needed here. The point of dividing the comments into two sections isn't entirely about creating a clique of cool kids. Rather, it's about drawing out the comments that are going to be interesting to our many, many readers who don't make a habit of jumping into comments without scaring them off with a lot of the commenter games that don't make much sense outside Gawker's own commenter community.

For a long time, stars were handed out to people who commented regularly with some level of wit or insight. With the new star powers, we're changing the criteria a bit: we're looking for people to help us filter out those most brilliant comments that lots of people come to the site to read. So, instead of simply handing stars out to the people we like — we love all our commenters equally! (that's not true) — we've made the stars more about responsibilities than popularity.

For instance: if you have a star, try promoting the most worthy of the unstarred. Your name will appear right under the comment (earning you good will and who knows what else) by using your thumbs up tool. And it also means steering clear of trolls and the idiots since anything a star commenter responds to gets promoted to the featured section.

And, of course, you should know that if this sounds like too much of a chore, then Gawker still has a place for people to come and chat with their friends. Just click "Show all comments" at the bottom and comment to your heart's content. Assuming that the comments will load for you, of course.

When Gawker first introduced comments, they were an exclusive club. As we've grown, we've opened up the doors more and more, and our comments have become, to be charitable, more freewheeling. Today, we the editors are taking control back with what we're calling "featured comments" as the place directly under posts to gather the best of the best, as decided by your tireless editors and star commenters.

But before I get into that, a few other changes:

• You have 15 minutes after you leave a comment to edit it. So, please, no more comments pointing out your typos.
• There are new tools to easily upload images and YouTube videos. Use them!
• Comment threads are only viewable by reverse chronology, just like on Facebook and Twitter.

Now about those star powers. The editors are the only ones who can give you a star, and we'll be giving them out to the commenters we trust the most. This means that many people who have stars now will be losing them. But for those who keep their stars, your comments will automatically appear in the featured comments, and you will have the ability to promote non-star comments up to the top level. In fact, just replying to a comment will bump up to the front page. You'll also see all of the unapproved comments left by new users and can approve the ones that you think are up to snuff. But use your powers wisely. We're going to be taking a closer look at who's doing what. Use your star powers to make mischief, and we'll take them away.

So what kind of comments are we looking to feature? We're giving more prominence to the featured comments because we've realized that they go a long way to setting the tone of the site. So, we want them to be an addition to what we post, not just an open-forum place to rant. We want to feature comments that are first and foremost about the post they're left on. They may add information, be a well-reasoned critique, a particularly funny line or, if you're named in the item, a rebuttal. Oh, and proper grammar counts. What we're not looking for: snark for snark's sake, comments about Gawker, IM-like conversations, attacks on your editors, comments pointing out how stupid other comments are (do not engage the trolls) and basically anything else that we don't like.

There are no doubt going to be plenty of glitches and bugs, and please email those to me. As for any other questions, ask away in the comments.

For reference, here's our overlord Nick Denton's rundown on the new changes:

Six months later, we're finally ready to go live with the Ganja power commenting system across the nine sites of Gawker Media. Here's why we've overhauled the comments — and a summary of the key changes you'll notice on the sites later today. There will be some glitches and many complaints — but the new system is elegant, already rich in editorial possibilities with so much more to come. It's an enormous accomplishment by the tech team in Budapest, New York — and Kansas City.

1. THE PROBLEM

As a site gets bigger, the comments tend to get busier — and sometimes more annoying. Our titles are no exception. Deadspin's had to contend with a war between the daytime and nighttime users; Jezebel editors battle for control with a politically-correct mob; perceptions of Gawker are set by a small group of glib and bitchy commenters. All sites that are growing as rapidly as ours have something like this problem — and one that can't be solved simply by banning the offenders or applying more strictly our approval process.

It can't be solved because the most pernicious comments don't come from trolls or spammers. Those can be easily identified and barred. What ruins a good discussion is what we could call the chatty commenter. They may be a devoted reader, someone we don't have the heart to ban. But they only occasionally contribute something to the sum of human knowledge. And the chatty commenters — because there are so many of them — set the tone. Their presence puts off the subjects of items — or other people with something interesting to say.

So we need to introduce another level — the power commenter — to the hierarchy. We used to refer to our comment environment as a club — with a velvet rope to keep the riff-raff out on the street. Well, now the club is too busy. If we're going to maintain credibility, we need a the equivalent of a VIP room. We'll populate the VIP room by giving special privileges to star commenters. They'll get prominence and space — as will their guests. And — we hope — it will be this salon that sets the tone of discussion.

Our comments have stood out amid the illiterate abuse and empty-headed wittering of the rest of the internet; we're going to make sure it stays that way as the audience continues to expand.

2. THE KEY CHANGES

* Privileges for star commenters (see below)
* Image and video embedding in comments
* Comment threads switched (like Facebook and Twitter) to reverse chronological order
* Related stories show to the right of each post (and a few other design changes)
* Comments can now be edited (for 15 minutes after publishing)

3. RIGHTS OF A STAR COMMENTER

* A gold star next to each commenter's name (as now)
* Comments given priority and published immediately after post
* A star commenter can see comments even before a moderator has approved them
* By replying to any comment, a star commenter can give it priority
* Promotion of another's comments to the featured section

4. THE FUTURE

* Many more items such as interviews, live chats, live blogs, contests and photo pools
* Web submission and publishing of tips
* Discussion forums around personalities and topics
* Commenting via Twitter
* Rebuttal rights for the subject of an article
* Commenters able to call on friends or colleagues for support in an online discussion

Meanwhile, if you're reading this, go outside and celebrate our freedom from alien persecution everywhere. Have a great holiday, and Sarah Palin, please stop fucking up and resigning so I can get drunk during the day in peace tomorrow.

Gawker the editorial staff and Gawker the advertising staff don't tell each other much about what they're doing. And they shouldn't. The way the media economic engine works is that the eyeballs attracted by editorial can be sold by advertising in order to pay for the editorial. It's a nice little symbiotic circle, but the key ingredient for keeping it running is to keep a bright line between the ads and edit. And clearly that wasn't the case here.

Our ad team has struck a deal with HBO to feature posts from Bloodcopy, a blog created by HBO for their vampire show True Blood, as "sponsored posts" on Gawker.com and the other Gawker Media sites over the next few weeks. As with other sponsored posts, Gawker editors don't write them, they'll have a big box around them and clearly be labeled as advertising.

But on Friday a post went up on Bloodcopy announcing that it "will be officially under the Gawker umbrella," along with us, Gizmodo, Jezebel, etc. That post has since been deleted (though you can find it preserved here thanks to ASSME) (Update: and has risen like the undead), but it, along with an invite to a rooftop party to promote the sponsorship, was enough to convince people that this was all real. (Which it's not.) Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider had a good chunk of his weekend ruined by sorting everything out and is rightfully pissed.

Agency Spy has wondered if the lack of a mention of all this is a sign that Gawker's editors have been muzzled. We haven't, but anything we would say has already been said by others. Gawker Media has been taken to the media criticism woodshed over this one. What's advertising should be called advertising and what's edit should be called edit. It hurts both to blur the distinction.

I still remember the day I called you up and tried to recruit you to Valleywag — only to learn that that sneaky rapscallion Nick Denton had beaten me to the punch by one whole day in offering you the night shift at Gawker. It all worked out in the end — and perhaps better than I could have imagined back in 2007. But the main lesson I take away from that is that you can get Denton to do pretty much whatever you want if you're patient enough.

Denton, who has a weakness for idle truisms, likes to say that gossip is a young man's game. But you're old enough to remember the first dotcom bubble, and how it popped. That's going to be key in the next few years. We may escape a depression, but Silicon Valley is facing a reckoning nonetheless. Too much venture capital chased too few idea for far too long — and a buoyant economy can no longer hide the startup factory's mistakes.

The biggest mistake you can make is getting too close to your Valley sources and fall for their groupthink in order to ingratiate yourself. (You know how I've scolded you for gullibly buying the hype that Twitter is an amazing source of real-time news. Okay, perhaps it was — for five seconds, before the blowhards, spammers, and self-promoters found it.) At least your schooling will help you remain an outsider: As a Berkeley grad, you'll have an instinctive dislike for the Valley's Stanford in-crowd.

At the same time, don't forget that your years living, studying, and working in the Bay Area give you a better understanding of your beat than anyone can have from 3,000 miles away. Gabriel and Nick, though well-intentioned, have the Manhattan media habit of confusing proximity with relevance. Gawker is much more than New York now — and Valleywag's unique place therein must be firmly grounded in northern California's shaky soil.

Remember: Love is far more powerful than hate. Keep a clear-eyed passion for the Valley. Most tech reporters here secretly loathe their subjects, but try to disguise it with a supine gladhandery as they beg for scoops about new startup website features. They hate themselves and the people they write about. Sad, right? By loving the Valley, you can write about it more honestly than any of them. Just prepare to have your heart broken again, and again, and again. To truly love something, you must love it with all its failings.

For example, the Valley's Alice-in-Wonderland economics — why is Twitter worth more than most startups precisely because it has no revenues to speak of? But the thing you must love most about Silicon Valley — the part of the story the local press corps always skips over in favor of buzzwords, punditry, and lazy analysis — is its people.

The Valley's story is not one of chips and code. It is not a tale of technology. It is the always-running tragicomedy of the people who make technology.

Here are a few characters to watch. I hope it helps — but I can't wait to see who you add to the list.

Marissa Mayer Valleywag's first story remains its best. The public face of Google, Mayer also runs search, the only business that matters there. The cupcake frosting of her girly image — one she assiduously advances at every opportunity — may humanize the otherwise robotic computer scientist. But it is a distraction. The real question to ask about Mayer: Does her spreadsheet-ridden management style scale to new problems beyond search? Are her strengths now turning into limitations?

Mark Zuckerberg Ignore the nerd façade. Facebook's 25-year-old CEO is headstrong and ruthless. Here's the grand irony of Zuckerberg's revolutionary venture: He claims to be all about openness and sharing. But his imperious, my-way-or-the-highway management style has created a fractious culture of dishonesty, delusion, and disillusionment at the social network. His underlings either learn to say things they don't believe, or they move on. This is why Sheryl Sandberg is exactly the wrong COO for Zuckerberg. The veteran of the Clinton Administration has forgotten her Google training and reverted to Washington-player form, where staying on message is all that counts. Facebook's best hope is that Zuckerberg learns from his mistakes — but first he has to recognize them as mistakes.

Carol Bartz Yahoo's CEO swears like a sailor. At last, a boss who has found the right language to describe Yahoo's plight! Bartz brings a refreshing frankness to Yahoo. But the already demoralized troops she inherited will need to start seeing results. Otherwise, Valleywag will continue to be a steady recipient of leaks from Sunnyvale.

Elon Musk The CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX is living the geek high life, playing with fast cars, rocket ships, and other people's money. It's wonderful that Musk has realized even a small part of his childhood fantasies. But he risks destroying his dreams by refusing to reconcile them with reality. Factcheck everything Musk says. For example, was he actually running either Zip2 or PayPal, the previous dotcom successes he likes to cite in his bio, when they were sold?

Owen Van Natta Everyone is going to give MySpace's new CEO a pass, because the so-called "social portal" is so clearly troubled. If the former Facebook executive succeeds in a turnaround, it will be viewed as an astonishing achievement; if he fails, people will say no one could save MySpace. That's not fair. Hold his feet to the fire, and judge this disturbingly tan rock-star boss like anyone else on the list.

Peter Thiel Thiel, the PayPal cofounder, likes to brag about how he recruits only the best brains from the best schools to work at Clarium Capital, his hedge fund. Oh, really? Take a look at their résumés on LinkedIn. Like so many of this outspokenly harebrained libertarian's theses, the claim sounds good on paper but doesn't stand up to inspection. Valleywag, alone in Silicon Valley, can take a keen look at Thiel's rhetoric without being dazzled by his inflated wealth.

Tim Armstrong Like Van Natta at MySpace, Armstrong, a Google golden boy now charged with running AOL, will be enjoying a honeymoon. Don't worry: There are plenty of disgruntled AOLers who will gladly help you break up the lovefest.

Jimmy Wales Remind me: What does Wikipedia's founder actually do to earn his keep, besides give speeches? In all this time, I was never able to figure that out. Maybe you can!

Eric Schmidt When did Google's CEO turn into such a raging egomaniac? When the blogosphere was the only corner of the Internet that criticized him, he dismissed it as a "cesspool." But now everyone from Hollywood to the New York Times to the Federal Trade Commission is looking askance at his online empire's practices. "Don't be evil" has turned into "don't get caught." He will, though. Be ready when he does.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin Google's wonder twins have achieved geek nirvana, creating a cloistered campus with free food, lava lamps, and exercise balls to spare. They have a fleet of jets to transport them to rocket launches or rendezvous with Richard Branson and Bono. They've even managed to get married and reproduce. Just one question: Are they still sane? Were they ever?

There are many people who will help you — many of the same people who helped me so much, I hope. They include:

• Nick Denton, for putting up with three years of playing hard to get — and then putting up with much more besides.
• Brian Lam, Choire Sicha, Noah Robischon and Lockhart Steele, for tag-teaming me into taking the job.
• Gabriel Snyder, for expertly steering Valleywag into Gawker's welcoming arms.
• All the Valleywaggers: Paul Boutin, Nick Douglas, Megan McCarthy, Tim Faulkner, Mary Jane Irwin, Jordan Golson, Nicholas Carlson, Jackson West, Melissa Gira Grant, and Tim Woolery. You guys, we've been through so much together!
• Richard Blakeley: We made sweet Photoshop magic together.
• Everyone at Gawker Media: How much do I love you? Far more than just five milligrams.
• Sarah Lacy, Kara Swisher, and Peter Kafka: My peers and fellow purveyors of Valley gossip, you constantly inspired me.
• Countless sources, tipsters, and fellow scribes: Please understand that I esteem you none the less for not naming you here. In fact, your continued anonymity is the best sign of my abiding affection.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Good luck, Ryan. I'll be reading eagerly.

Don't screw it up.

Yours,

Owen
The Valleywag

(Photos by Brian Solis and Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Owen took the Valleywag reins from our overlord Nick Denton himself and has fiercely worked his Silicon Valley sources for gossip and scoops. In December, Valleywag was merged into Gawker, and when we tried to talk him into staying, he said he misses the management headaches of running his own site. He's keeping mum on his new gig, but we hear it involves the letters N, B, and C and will focus on Bay Area news.

As Gawker's night editor, Ryan lets me sleep easier at night. But it's time for him to rejoin the land of the living and the tech beat is a natural for him. Based in San Francisco, he started his journalism career at mags like Upside and Business 2.0 before the dot-com boom went bust. He joined Gawker last year from San Francisco Business Times. The night gig is by design one for a generalist, but he's come up with plenty of news at the intersection of business and media, such as Bloomberg's premature obituary for Apple CEO Steve Jobs and exposing the underbelly of Arianna Huffington's blog empire. Now part of the larger Gawker family, he'll still have room to write about his other areas of fascination, like military aviation shills and Fox News' slimy PR shop.

And that means there's a job opening at Gawker. I'm looking for a new night editor who's primarily responsible for keeping track of any breaking news after about 7 p.m. East Coast time, as well as getting a jump on the dawn's news stories. Since hours pretty brutal in the U.S., I'm especially interested in hearing from people who live in Australia or Europe. If you're reading this from overseas or are nocturnal by nature, email me.

In true blog style, we're figuring this out as we go, but the idea is that as long as you're nice and he's willing, T.A.N. will be back every Saturday afternoon to share his wit and wisdom. He makes his blog home here where he ruminates on pop culture, race, politics, comedy and hip hop and has contributed to outfits including the New York Times, NPR, The Guardian and The Daily Beast. He's currently at work on his first book titled Negropedia which he describes as "an encyclopedic send-up of the modern black experience in post-racial America" and is due in to his publisher Crown/Three Rivers later this year.

We also set a new page-view record last month with 26.5 million page views, well above the 24.2 million page views we had in February. The expanded coverage areas after folding in Valleywag and Defamer appears to be attracting a broader audience. Since we didn't have any giant break-out stories — like Sarah Palin emails or Tom Cruise Scientology videos — traffic seemed to be pretty evenly spread. We were helped by Facebook, with their employees trashing their redesign and the ShamWow guy, who got arrested for beating a prostitute, as well as Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart, who spent more than a week feuding with each other. Still, news seems to have slowed down recently (or is it just me?) so it may be tough to match these kind of numbers in April.

Sure, it's a bit hokey, but it's also an honor. So, I along with Ryan, Hamilton, Richard, Alex, Owen and new kid on the block John thank everyone who voted. To quote Sean Penn's perfect acceptance line: "Thank you, you commie homo-loving sons of guns!"

As a result, Defamer is being absorbed into the company's power-crazed flagship title. Defamer posts will now appear under http://defamer.com/, while simultaneously feeding into the Gawker homepage.

Gawker's managing editor Gabriel Snyder, a former West Coaster who covered Hollywood for Variety and W, will oversee the transition. As for your trusty Defamer team, we've opted to explore new horizons. Stv, Kyle, the McCluskey Twins, and myself will be here through the remainder of the week. Watch this space for exciting announcements on what's to come.

Questions? Observations? Muffled sobs? Leave them in the comments. Media inquiries: Ask Mr. Denton directly. (Read his take here.) Gawker is hiring someone to cover Hollywood gossip. Applications, and all other matters, to Gabriel.

We now encourage you to get your Oscar drinking on early, in anticipation of our liveblog at 8 p.m. EST / 5 p.m. PST. It seemed a timely and fittingly spectacular way to go out—by plunging the illustrious trophy into my gut head-first, in one final, savage act of Hollywood harakiri.

- Seth

You see, Time's argument is that since Gawker grew up chronicling media barons, we're now doomed to go down with them. It's the sort of pat logic you might find in a newsweekly pitch meeting: "All that's left for Gawker is to report on its own demise."

The expansion of our coverage beyond the Manhattan media world —- and into entertainment, politics and, after last year's merger with Valleywag, technology — has been paying off. In fact, traffic has been booming around here: With nearly 23.5 million page views last month, according to our public traffic numbers, the site had its second biggest month ever. And last week on Quantcast we passed the 3 million unique visitors mark, a better than 50% increase from December.