Emily continues:

Nick figured that I was just another dumb shit/ yacht-hopping "heiress" and that the only retaliation he would get would be from Steven Brill- best of all, that this was going to 'up' his status and maybe even land him a good table at Michael's.

What sets Emily apart, of course, is not merely the distinguished name, but the coupling of that name with her profound and impressive cluelessness. In college, I had a seminar with Emily while she was a visiting student at Columbia. Her incessant references to prep school and befuddlement about how to get to the center of the Brooklyn Bridge ("Where should I tell the cab driver to stop?") intrigued me, and I had no idea who her father was. I found her website from the pre-Essentially Emily days, where she had posted a picture of herself in her Hanukkah jammies getting a brand new Lexus, complete with a large red bow, just like the ads.

(Her specialness aside from the name may be why no one bothers her brother Sam.)

But all the ridicule of the internet has not deterred Emily. As she says, "I developed a 'now or never' mindset (which I do not regret to this day)." This day is now, right? Because if it were never, that wouldn't make sense at all.

And what exactly is Emily doing now? Her dad wants to know: "He keeps telling me to 'Get a J-O-B.' got one dad."

Apparently getting mocked on Gawker is now a profession. Consider this post your spring bonus.

I'm amazed we've managed to keep a lid on this news; that, given your naturally gossipy natures, must be a first! We're spinning off three sites: Idolator, Gridskipper and—this one may be a surprise—Wonkette. There were indeed some rumors about Maura Johnston's music blog late last year; they were true of course. For reasons that I'll explain below, both it and our travel and politics sites have better commercial futures outside Gawker than within. (Excuse the corporate lingo: some of it is unavoidable.) But, first, the facts, which will be hitting the wires later this morning, or as soon as you leak this email. Go ahead!

* IDOLATOR is going to Buzznet, a music-focused web and social network. Buzznet recently acquired Idolator's chief rival, Stereogum, and received a big investment from Universal Music Group.
* GRIDSKIPPER isn't going far: it's being taken over by Curbed, the network founded by Lockhart Steele, in which Gawker Media is a shareholder.
* WONKETTE is being spun off to the managing editor, Ken Layne, former founder of one of the web's very first news sites, Tabloid.net. The title will become part of the Blogads network of political sites, which includes Daily Kos, among others.

Why these three sites? To be blunt: they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did.

Music audiences are fragmented across genres; Maura's Idolator gave Stereogum a good run, but a group with a whole array of music sites will command more attention from record labels than we could. In the case of Gridskipper, our urban travel guide, we could never match Curbed in attention to city-specific content and advertising. As for Wonkette: political advertisers are a strange breed; they don't come through the same agencies our sales people deal with.

I'm relieved we've found pretty decent homes for the three sites, and most of their writers, but we're gutted to lose them. Idolator's Pop Critic's Poll was a tremendous coup—and Patric's bleeding-heart logo for the site was one of my favorites. Gridskipper is so far the most sophisticated travel blog: it entirely deserved its inclusion in Time's list of the 50 coolest websites.

And Wonkette is one of the brands with which the company is most associated; people will be shocked that we would ever part with it. The political site has won an array of Bloggies and other awards; it introduced the word ass-fucking into the dictionary of political abuse; the founding editor's slippers are even on display in the new media museum in Washington, DC. And Ken and his team have brought a new liveliness to the site this election season—validated by the record traffic of the last three months.

So why not wait, at least till the election? Well, since the end of last year, we've been expecting a downturn. Scratch that: since the middle of 2006, when we sold off Screenhead, shuttered Sploid and declared we were "hunkering down", we've been waiting for the internet bubble to burst. No, really, this time. And, even if not, better safe than sorry; and better too early than too late.

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. (Key facts are below, in case anyone asks.) We'll be able to devote more attention to breakouts such as Jezebel and io9, as well as established titles such as Gizmodo and Kotaku, which are becoming utterly dominant in their domains. And, then, once this recession is done with, and we come up from the bunker to survey the internet wasteland around us, we can decide on what new territories we want to colonize.

Both Noah and I are around to answer any questions. On email, IM, or phone.

Regards

Nick

10. Mark Cuban: The billionaire dot-commer and owner of the Dallas Mavericks actually gets a lot of attention for his real blog.

9. Al Sharpton: A site called News Groper started running celeb blogs last year; Sharpton's is one of the few funny ones.

8. Tom Cruise: A shame this one hasn't resurfaced this year.

7. Darth Vader: The jokes are too geeky, but this is one of Twitter's most-followed accounts.

6. Nick Denton: The fake blog of Gawker's publisher, dirty and full of in-jokes and totes written by a former Gawker editor.

5. Rosie O'Donnell: No wait, it's real, I just keep forgetting when "ro" posts things like:

effective monday march 17th 35 years 2 the day my mom left the governor goes thru the whore door

4. Condoleezza Rice: Most jokes on this fake Twitter account are about White House personal politics: "Stuck in traffic on Pennsylvania Ave and guess who pulls up next to me. Colin in his Avalanche! AWKWARD!"

3. Harriet Miers: The Supreme Court nominee blogged like a 13-year-old girl. Fake Harriet kept posting photos of Real Harriet to throw the ludicrous style into sharp relief.

2. There is no #2, because nothing deserves to come close to #1.

1. Steve Jobs: The only consistently great parody blogger, Fake Steve Jobs is more entertaining than real Steve would ever be. Better yet, the Fake Steve book isn't just a rehash of the blog.

There was something distinctly calculating about Nick. He was famous for not committing to a Friday- or Saturday-night plan unless he could be certain that he had alighted upon the best option. As a result, if you ended up at the same bar or party as him, you were left with the sense you were in the right place, which was both reassuring and profoundly irritating.

...

Eventually he returned to London to cover investment banking, and was the lead reporter on the collapse of Barings Bank, breaking the story about the secret 8888 account where rogue trader Nick Leeson had hidden his losses. I ask him if that experience as a journalist informed what he does now. 'I don't know,' he says, helpfully. 'I'm not very reflective.'

[Observer UK]

It's Gawker Media's anal side: we like to make changes in a neat package. As well as my own promotion, there are new managing editors at two other titles; and there's a new site launching today. At Wonkette, the political gossip site, by popular demand, the legendary Ken Layne is back, this time as managing editor. And, at Defamer, Gawker's entertainment gossip title, Mark Graham is coming in as managing editor.

Mark Lisanti, the site's founding editor and one of the best writers on the web, will remain. But Defamer's expanding, into celebrity photos and video clips, and original reporting. So we're hiring the site's first managing editor. Mark Graham, who'll take over the administration of the operation, was a manager at Viacom. More importantly, he's an old-school blogger, creator of Whatevs, one of the first pop culture blogs.

And the one last bullet point to this company press release: Annalee Newitz, a contributor to Wired among many other publications, is helming Gawker's new science fiction and futurist culture site, io9, which launches today.

Where to begin? Let's start with my very first day, when Nick very solemnly informed me that I should go after everyone: "There's no one you can't afford to piss off." Uh, actually, Nick? There's no one you can't afford to piss off: the rest of us still have to eat.

Or the first week, when we had a staff meeting at the office to discuss the site's focus. "Gawker has a reputation, and not undeservedly so in my opinion, for being needlessly cruel. We need to be aware of that," he told us. Two minutes later he was suggesting story ideas. "Who's shorter in real life than you think they'd be? Who has dandruff? That's the sort of thing people want to know about." THANKS FOR THE CLARITY, boss!

Then there's the correspondence. Typical Denton e-mails are cryptic one-line semi-sentences like "real estate porn?" or "long story in times today" which send the editors scrambling to decipher their meanings. On the other hand, sometimes he can be absolutely direct in what he wants. For example:

Speaking of omissions, why haven't you lot made hay of the nude photo of Annie Liebovitz in the latest Vanity Fair?
there are pubes involved.

Nick Denton: Speaking as the employees of a gay media magnate ourselves, we're gonna say no.
Nick Denton: Congratulations, you've finally managed to piss me off.

Frankly, I was a little disappointed it had taken that long. Hopefully I've been able to do it one last time.

In addition to the free drinks, the party boasted a few other attractions. Like: Radar editor Maer Roshan and Gawker publisher Nick Denton, standing in the exact same brightly-lit room! (Mmm, friendly.) Art, at least some of it by Terence Koh! A teenaged singer strumming his guitar in the corner while absolutely no one paid attention to his underamplified set! Observer media reporter Michael Calderone! "I sit right next to Doree. If I wanted to, I could just reach over and touch her," he told us.

You see?

But the evening's real highlight was the outfits the cocktail waitresses were forced to wear. In keeping with Campari's "it's sort of the 30s, but breast implants have been invented" advertising, they were dressed all sexy-retro, and they were wearing these adorable little hats with veils by Victor Osborne. We were hoping that was what was going to be in the goodie bag, or rather goodie box. Instead: a miniature bottle of Campari.

Also: duh! How could anyone even vaguely familiar with Naomi's credentials or latest book's thesis not know that last night's event would be full of the kind of classic New York elderliberals who like to applaud when anyone says anything negative about Bush and holler back encouragingly at public speakers as if they are back at the Union rally of their heyday? (Also: bless these people, for serious). But anyone who attended last night's event looking for anything remotely resembling dissent or debate would have been disappointed. And there is something sort of inherently boring about sitting in a room full of people who all feel exactly the same way.

Actually! As NYPL Live organizer-jester Paul Holdengräber kicked off last night's event with a series of announcements, it occurred to me that attending events at the NYPL is almost exactly like attending a completely secular religious service. I had missed High Holy Day services this year, so it made me feel virtuous to be learning about exactly how our government is evil in a brightly-lit room full of like-minded people. Probably most of them were Jewish, too!

In addition to being like Temple, last night's event was also sort of like eavesdropping on a first date, because even though Roger edited the original article in his magazine which later evolved into her book, this was the first time he and Naomi had ever met in person. He flirted with her unabashedly, seconding all her ideas, but made sure to gesture vividly from time to time with his wedding-ring hand.

Naomi, for her part, was patient with Roger throughout her talk, even when he cut her off in order to express her own ideas less articulately than she would have. Maybe she fell under the spell of his tiny-nosed, almost RobLoweian cuteness, but I doubt it. For my part, I was less impressed with Roger's rogerability than I'd hoped to be. He has big ears.

If you've ever seen Naomi speak, you know that she has an almost superhumanly great rhetorical style. It's almost eerie, actually, how she will keep smiling placidly while talking about how "the war on terror is not a war, it's a new economy." The one time things threatened to get too serious was when Naomi was talking about visiting with a patient who'd been the victim of an evil psychiatrist's 1950s experiment with using extreme electroshock therapy to erase a person's old personality in order to rebuild from scratch. But she cut the tension with a single line: "I told her, you remind me of Iraq ... sort of a heavy thing to say to someone, right?"

That idea—that our government has created chaos, and taken advantage of naturally occurring chaos or terror, in order to attempt to install what they say is a free market economy but what is actually what she calls "crony capitalism"—is the central one of Naomi's new book, and, you know, it's a great one. Last night's audience certainly applauded for a long time, but you'd expect that.

Afterwards, Naomi continued to beam beatifically as she signed books for all her bedredlocked, chunky-beaded fans. Roger stood off to the side with two young women—Harper's interns maybe. "Are you staying for the drinks?" he asked one of them, making a "tossing one back" gesture. "I wouldn't miss the drinking part!" she purred.

Portfolio said:

Perhaps the funniest moment of the session occurred when Gawker's rep likened working for Nick Denton — who was in the room — to getting hit in the head with a surfboard, drawing guffaws from the crowd.

Emails to Denton seeking elaboration were not returned immediately.

BALK BTW:"Perhaps the funniest moment of the session occurred when Gawker's rep likened working for Nick Denton — who was in the room — to getting hit in the head with a surfboard, drawing guffaws from the crowd."
BALK BTW: Do you think that's an accurate assessment?
BALK BTW: I mean, Tom WAS hit in the head by a surfboard, he knows of what he speaks. [Ed. Note: This is actually true, he was.]
DarkLordBalthazar: Ha — you'd better not be thinking about one of your self-referential quicklinks. The pain of a surfboard collision will be as nothing.
BALK BTW: Perfect answer. It'll be so meta!
DarkLordBalthazar: You'll be pleased to know that you have persuaded me of something.
DarkLordBalthazar: Let this mark the moment when pay-for-traffic changed journalism, forever.

And just like that, I've ruined both journalism and the internet for everyone. Sorry about that. Also, for the record, being hit in the head by a surfboard apparently falls on the lower end of the punishment scale in the online world. Keep that in mind when you're applying for my soon-to-be-forcibly-vacated job!

Silicon Alley Gets Its Close-Up [Portfolio]

Watching Matt Drudge [NY; alternate online headline: "Stalking Matt Drudge"]

Mr. Dyer, it turns out, wasn't the one who had to be embarrassed. His boss had photos of himself attempting to imbibe two drinks at once, ostensibly, Mr. Dyer ventures, to send the message: "I'm a crazy, young party guy." The boss also wore a denim suit ("I'd never seen anything like it," Mr. Dyer says) and posed in a photo flashing a hip-hop backhand peace sign.

It was painful to watch. "I hurt for him," says Mr. Dyer.

Oy, what a whiner. For the record, we do not know Mr. Dyer's boss, but our own employer's Facebook page has a full-length picture of him in a Sergio Tacchini jumpsuit holding a four-foot bong in the hand that he is not using to grab his crotch. So we feel your pain, dude.

OMG — My BossWants to 'Friend' Me On My Online Profile [WSJ]

So I'm off for the rest of the week, heading toward Maui to tail Paris Hilton and leaving the laptop behind. Hopefully, the intervening five days will allow my crippled fingers to heal and give me time to kick my worrying speed habit. Everyone's off tomorrow, but Choire, Emily, Josh, and Doree - who, in spite of everything, really are the best team you could hope to work with (except Emily) - will see you through the rest of the week. Be kind to them: Can you imagine what it's going to be like to be shorthanded during a news lull? On the other hand, it may turn out that a Balkless Gawker is a superior site. Which is my biggest fear! As difficult as this job is, I'd hate to leave it just now - I don't have anything else lined up yet. So have fun, but not too much fun.

And have a great Fourth, kids. Eat a hot dog for me.

[Image: Achewood]

BONUS DIRECTOR'S CUT: Go behind the scenes and see how this post happened!

If you've read this site with any degree of frequency, for which we apologize, you'll have noticed that Thursdays seem to be the most difficult day for us to put together anything resembling a readable blog. We stretch more, we make items out of things that normally wouldn't merit a mention, we resort to weird, self-referential material that results in a fusillade of indignant e-mails from publisher Nick Denton, all of them simply reading "too inside." But, chatting with a colleague from popular new girly-site Jezebel this morning, we learned that we were not alone.

Jezebeller: Do you want to do something about a picture of Angelina Jolie?
BALK BTW: Hahahaha
Jezebeller: i dunno, just a thought. i have pic if u want it
BALK BTW: Sure, we'll give it a whirl.
BALK BTW: Fucking Thursdays.
Jezebeller: RIGHT?
BALK BTW: We're ALREADY at Julia Allison
Jezebeller: why the fuck are thursdays so awful?
BALK BTW: Nothing publishes at all.
Jezebeller: yeah but thurs. is bad for us too
Jezebeller: and we don't over-rely on that kind of stuff the way u do
BALK BTW: It's a weird, eventless day for whatever reason.
Jezebeller: at least it's one day till friday
BALK BTW: Maybe that's why.
BALK BTW: Can't you guys gin up another "I would totally blow him" IM? People seem to like those!
Jezebeller: what was a totally blow him?
BALK BTW: Oh, just a sort of "hot guys" conversation that you ladies do so well.
Jezebeller: haha
Jezebeller: we'll see
Jezebeller: we have to be "into" it
BALK BTW: I want to do an IM with Choire about why he's so obsessed with the Transformers movie.
BALK BTW: But I'm afraid I'd find out.
Jezebeller: HAHAHA
Jezebeller: PLEASE DO THAT
BALK BTW: I think we'd all be too frightened to learn the real reasons.

After reading about the Webby Awards Party at the Box, I expected last night's Webby Gala After-Party at Hiro to be douchey with a chance of chode. Maybe there would be a fist-fight over CSS standards! Instead, it was filled with a suspiciously high amount of beautiful women gyrating to the schmoove sounds of DJ Jazzy Jeff on the wheels of steel. My guess? Webby organizers walked across the street to Buddakan and gave 100's to models to please oh God improve our party. And improve it they did.

Seeing as this whole Internet thing seems to be working out for some, Nikola and I set out to try to find some web billionaires. Then we realized we didn't know any moguls by appearance; I suggested looking for older men with big faces and tall dates. We found some, but they were pornographers. In our struggle we also talked to lots of people who thought their award-winning sites were so very interesting. One woman bragged to me that her site just set a record for the highest amount of traffic ever sent to the Webby website! I told her that she also just set a record for the highest amount of boring
ever sent to my ears.

Eventually, we found the YouTube guys, Chad and Steve. They seemed pretty chill but so would you if you were crazy wealthy. Steve told us something about it being 99% luck and 1% them, but maybe he was talking about his successes with women. If I were them, I'd probably enjoy using the line "do you want to go viral?" a whole lot more than I should.

Emily: So we came into the subterranean chamber beneath the NYPL into a room of New Yorker writers and curious would-be brides ...
Doree: And publishing types!
Emily: Right! and NYPL event regulars, who are a breed unto themselves... and Kurt Andersen and David Remnick.
Doree: And Nick Denton. Who, oddly, went to college with Rebecca Mead!
Emily: I bet he did do that oddly.
Emily: And then we waited while "White Wedding," a sappy slow-dance song, and "Perfect Day" played on a loop.
Doree: Yes! And champagne was chilling in a bucket onstage, and there were roses.
Emily: Henry set the tone at the outset of the talk by promising to be "as fawning and homosexual as possible" and he sure was.
Doree: He CERTAINLY was.
Emily: That's the peril of these NYPL things. It's always "me and my friend onstage talking about the great book I wrote," and the only opportunity for any dissent or real discussion comes during the Q&A, but the only people who ask pointed questions at Q&As tend to be loons or people who obviously miss college.
Doree: Ha! Or people who are looking for The Answer. Like that guy there with his girlfriend.
Emily: Oh! RIGHT! Did you write down his question? It was pretty priceless...
Doree: I have this written down: "she'll cry or whatever" "how do you actually DO that stuff"
Emily: Here is what i have written down. "I find that when you try to discuss this stuff with your woman" (at that point everyone gasped/chuckled, which tells you a lot about the crowd) "you'll want to get into it from a sociopolitical standpoint, and she'll, like, cry or whatever." As you know I came up to this couple afterwards, shared an elevator with them and counseled them about their relationship (because i am so qualified).
Doree: And??
Emily: Well, they're not engaged, but they're just trying to figure out whether they have the same priorities. The girl said "I don't even want to get married, I just want to have a huge party"
I was like "So have a huge party!" Sigh.
Doree: Sigh indeed. Maybe the book will help them.
Emily: It seems like this book is going over big among people who are maybe a little jaded and bitter about the institution of marriage and maybe less-big among the ladies who, say, don't even have a boyfriend but still spend at least an hour a day on theknot.com.
Doree: Right. Ladies for whom their wedding day is the culmination of years of hopes, dreams, etc. Rebecca wants to pull the wool from people's eyes. But do they want the wool to be pulled? No.
Emily: It's similar to the Leslie Bennetts book in that way.
Doree: Which is interesting, because she slammed the Leslie Bennetts book in the New Yorker.
Emily: Oh! right. Well I don't mean they come from the same critical perspective. Just that they are both predicated on robbing women of their cozy illusions.
Doree: And both books have been getting lukewarm or even hostile reviews from other women. A lot of the reviews of the Bennetts book were like, really nitpicky, i thought, of her as a person.
Emily: Right, just as Jodi Kantor's review of Rebecca's book basically said, "my grandma cried harder at my fancy wedding than yours did at your courthouse one."
Doree: There's a lot of self-righteousness being thrown around.
Emily: In both instances, the story shifted from what the book was ostensibly "about" to how the woman who wrote the book lived her values. I think there's a perception, in both instances, that Leslie and Rebecca wrote a book from a place of "I figured something out, and I'm giving you this GIFT of sharing my wisdom with you."
Doree: Right, which then opens them, as people, up to criticism, i guess?
Emily: It rightly should, I guess.
Doree: I thought Rebecca kind of dodged that question, about whether it's possible to have a wedding that's in between the courthouse and the $27,000 blowout that's the national average. Like, you're either a courthouse wedding person, or you've bought into the wedding industrial complex.
Emily: You're right, she just sort of explained what the word "average" means.
Doree: Right? That was weird!
Emily: The thing about having a British accent is that it's easy to sound very polite! But it's also easy to sound very condescending.
Doree: And it makes it easy to shut down a conversation with a pithy remark. I was almost moved to defend the Disney weddings because she was so condescending about them. Ok, yes, they are shocking! But... should we judge them from our lofty perch?
Emily: That was when it really seemed like she was just being a snob about AMERICA.
Doree: And the way she was making fun of the Disney PR woman was mean
Emily: I feel like there's a lot of that in her writing, and it's very entertaining. The cutting detail, not underscored... like the Disney PR woman's unforgettable aquamarine contacts that made her look "almost animated," or Cindy Adams feeding Jazzy a pastry from her mouth. One does get the sense, though, that she approaches these things from a perch of wry, superior amusement. And so after the reading Nick Denton had a party for her! Huh.
Doree: Mm.
Emily: That shrimp was weird. Sort of soggy.

When I moved to New York after graduation, I worked for a few years in finance, almost exclusively with men, all of whom were, as far as I could tell, exclusively straight. Then I met a guy named Nick Denton, who became a close friend. Nick was gay, but I didn't realize it until the second or third time we met. To be fair, I'm not the only one to make that mistake, though certain of our friends insist that it was obvious—obvious!—from the beginning.

Nick and I started a website called Gawker.com in late 2002 and it quickly became an extremely popular media gossip blog. As the site's profile grew, there was bit of speculation online that Nick and I were a couple. And as amusing as that was, I had to admit that on some days it felt like it. I was certainly spending more time with Nick than I was with anyone I was dating and we were in each other's space constantly. It was a stimulating (ah, the conversations!) and sometimes tumultuous (oh, the arguments!) relationship and has stayed that way in one form or another since then. We've fought and made up a million times, both publicly and privately, and the third-party commentary is always the same: God, you two have such a bizarre relationship. And they're right: We do. And though I'd never admit it when we're fighting, my life would probably be far less interesting without it.

Anyway, Levy, described in this terrific Slate review as "an olive in the show's jumbo-sized cocktail of pop detritus," is absolutely adorable. Even though we were apparently being insulted, it was hard not to be amused by the sophisticated retorts Levy stumblingly delivered. It takes a lot of talent, we find, to read aloud and occasionally look up—we're pretty sure if the show actually lasts a few more months he'll have almost mastered it!

In any event, to answer the most hurtful indictment, we did not sleep with Nick Denton to get our job; we sleep with Nick Denton to keep our job. —balk

Letterman Meets Maxim [Slate]
Earlier: Fox's 'Red Eye' Can Keep Its Name, For Now

Outside the hotel, Showtime had arranged for down-on-their-luck thespians to be dolled up in vaguely historical costumes. Their clothing ranged from American colonial to Elizabethan, completely avoiding the mid-16th century when the whole Henry VIII thing took place. Also, though I'll check Wikipedia, I'm pretty sure they didn't have Segways back then. Ah crap. They did!

Upstairs was Bobby Zarem, the last of the old school PR guys. He was deep in conversation with one of the extras who, at this point, had come in from the cold and was roaming the room in doublet and pantaloons. Well into his 70s, Zarem, is a short, balding voluble man, at once gruff and endearing. We chatted a bit about nothing (his favorite movie is Singing in the Rain). I asked him about the whole Roman v. Lewis thing, since he is the king of Elaine's. Zarem said a bunch of shit off the record. But the best quote concerns neither the pedophile nor the libeler. Sort of:

Mia Farrow is a filthy lying dirty cunt. She said Michael Caine introduced her to Woody but it was me. But she says it was Michael just because it sounds more glamorous. But fuck that. We were all at Elaine's and she had come twice to meet Allen. The first time he wasn't there but he was the second time and I introduced them. I even told Page Six she was a lying cunt. And still, I was invited to her book party.

DENTON: How many threesomes have you had?
RUFUS: I don't think any. What's a definition of a threesome?
DENTON: Jesus Christ, how many times has Nerve mentioned threesomes and you've never had one?
JOSH: Hey Nick, how many threesomes have you had?
[SILENCE]
JOSH: Ummm....

By the halfway point, our Guinness was warm and our curiosity about Henry the 8 (as they call him) was exhausted. So we dozed off in our chairs, to dream of threesomes, Bobby Zarem and codpieces. —Josh

Nick Denton is the publisher of Gawker Media, a company that includes the websites Gizmodo, Fleshbot, Valleywag, Defamer, Consumerist, Wonkette, Kotaku, Idolator, Lifehacker, Deadspin, Gridskipper, and... oh! Right. Gawker. The website you're reading right now. How meta! Or, well, how lame. Or, as one former Gawker employee puts it, "How wryly self-deprecatory. And therefore charmingly innoculating. He's good." Hey, he wasn't the one nominating him. And in some ways, he is good!

For one thing, according to some former employees, he's a pranksterish rapscallion, which is always a fun quality in a boss. Really. "Nick's like a four year old. You tell him not to touch something and he HAS to touch it. It's quite fun," says one, while another echoes, "He encourages insolence. He wants his editors to make mischief, to create a stir—and if you're fine with being in that role, it can be incredibly fun. It's a (not necessarily respectable but still kinda awesome) mandate that you won't really find elsewhere." And compared to working for almost any publisher, there's a shocking amount of autonomy.

But is there a darker side to Denton's whimsicality? Maybe. Well, YES. See, mischief becomes less fun when you're the target. One former editor remembers a time when Denton wanted to start "an unannounced (but not actually hidden or pword-protected) blog" that detailed all the editors' mistakes and the reprimands they'd received." Ha ... ha? This same former editor also mentions the "comments he leaves to undermine his editors" as a source of job dissatisfaction. Well, yes. Being publicly hung out to dry by one's boss is never fun. But is it funny? Actually, sometimes yes! And sometimes no. In any case, one editor hastens to clarify that sometimes Denton's 'mischief' can veer off in a much less okay direction, especially after a blogger has left for greener pastures: "Making shit up whole cloth is not mischief making. It's just being a jerk."

So what else is bad? Well. There was the Radar pie throwing incident (pictured). What happened, according to a former editor, was that Radar was having a party to celebrate its latest launch, and Denton attended. Someone thought it would be funny to throw a pie. According to the former editor, after the party Denton wrote on his personal blog that the pie had missed him, prompting Matt Drudge (huh, finding a lot of dead links! Suspicious!) to set the record straight. But already at 8:48 p.m., quite soon after the incident, a Gawker editor was compelled to post about the pie missing Denton's mug—and later had to correct the record. And yet! "He was able to convince a lot of people that the pie missed him, despite the hundred or so eyewitnesses and photographic evidence is really indicative of one of Nick's more pronounced talents: managing his own PR."

But the real question is—was the pie incident Denton's idea in the first place? We still don't know. That PR was expertly managed. And he's doing it right now! It's like he's inside our brain. ARRRGH. DENTON GOOD!

somewhere amidst the bottle of Montagny and the fantastic conversation and the massive pot pies and the jon-bon-jovis and karolina-kurkovas and andre-harrells and graydon-carters and brian-mcnallies and eric-goodes and sean-macphersons and jimmy-mccaffreys etc etc etc i tap leigh-haber on the elbow and declare, "hey look it's nick-denton."
leigh-haber takes one glance at nick-denton and responds, "oh. hmm. should i say something?" and before i even have a chance to completely execute my shrug, leigh-haber is out of her seat and across the room ohmygoodness i was so fucking proud of her she's like totally my hero.
apparently leigh-haber said to nick-denton [right there in front of his entire dinner party-of-six GO GIRL]: "y'know last week i was promoted (because i worked my ass off and i'm finally getting some dues) and it should have been a nice day for me, but instead of feeling good about it, i had to feel miserable, because i was both promoted and eviscerated on the very same day, by a bunch of people who have absolutely no inkling who i am."
[or something like that, i admit i'm paraphrasing but i know the word "eviscerate" was definitely in there.]

The Leigh-Judith comparison is surprisingly apt. When I was Leigh's assistant she was, like Judith, paranoid, narcissistic, a screamer, and given to indiscreet affairs with colleagues, including one whose wife was dying of cancer. She also had a major alcohol problem and would come back from lunch reeking of chardonnay—curiously, when she was drunk at the office was the one time she was ever actually nice to me. She also used to make me get her coffee every morning from a deli near the office—but would never reimburse me. It was $1.03 every day. I was making $20k a year—I couldn't afford coffee for myself!

Thu 01/18 [PX This.]
Earlier: Conspiracy Theories Grab Bag: Leigh Haber Random Reacharound Edition

• Photoshop and other graphical tricks can often disguise the fact that your posts have little or no information in them.
  
• Short, agendaless items pulled directly from the tip line will often provide you with that air of insideriness that's so vital for a successful post. Particularly if they involve big names from the industry.
  
• "This thing looks like that thing" never gets old. Ask Kurt Andersen!
  
• Be generous. It's not enough to talk about a reporter; you should also talk about that reporter's physical appearance, pointing out her pulchritude in the most effusive manner possible. It speaks well of your site, and it's the kind of thing people want to hear.
  
• Engage the commenters. Sure, some of them can be truculent or deliberately obtuse, but the involvement of a comment community can really make any post - no matter how vapid or desperate - appear to be a riot of activity.
  
• Don't be afraid to be hypocritical. Worried about castigating someone for committing the exact same practices in which you usually engage? Don't give it a second thought! Who remembers? And if someone does, and e-mails you an angry response, hey, free post!
  
• Naked chicks amp up clickthroughs. Rock 'em.
  
• Master the art of the filler post. Linkdumps and bullets are your friend.
  
• When all else fails, never underestimate the power of a screengrab to masquerade as actual content. It's quick, it's easy, and requires little effort on your part.

  So good luck, Valleywag guy. Follow these simple rules and you'll be blogging like the pros in no time. And remember: There's no one you can't afford to piss off. You're the boss.

  Valleywag

  Earlier: New Face at Valleywag