Denton was impressed with Lacy at the time: She had a big cover story, a book deal, access to hotshot young founders and, oh yes, was "the hottest reporter in the tech world — ever." She passed on the opportunity and now writes for the likes of Yahoo and BusinessWeek.com.

But Lacy can stroke her ego by imagining how well things might have gone — and sending a "shout out" to the scandal-mongering publisher who, in a rare turn, briefly stroked that same ego himself. Fantasyland is the place where bubbles never explode!

The main point:

From conglomerates to internet ventures, executives should be planning now on a decline of up to 40% in advertising spending during this cycle. Instead they're sleepwalking into economic extinction—even those lean online ventures which were supposed to take up the mantle and preserve New York's position as a media capital.

A 40% decline is far more pessimistic than any other major forecasts floating around. But not totally unjustified. Nick's bases his grim assessment on Morgan Stanley uber-analyst Mary Meeker's model of how economic slowdowns affect advertising and the experiences of other countries like Japan and Indonesia who experienced banking crises. Using their numbers, a 40% drop in advertising spending is not unreasonable. And he thinks Internet advertising will plunge along with everything else.

What does that mean for Gawker Media? His list of how to handle the hard times: only stay in categories that attract advertisers, and give them more value for their money (i.e. more and bigger ads); renegotiate vendor contracts and employee pay downwards; "offshore more"; and, most ominously from an employee standpoint, consolidate titles.

It's time to choose which properties make it aboard the lifeboat. The era of the sprawling network—established franchises mixed in with experimental sites—is over.

Urgh. Read the whole depressing thing at NickDenton.org.

When are you going to write a column saying that Nick Denton is the biggest Jerk in town? Or is he blackmailing you so much all with his Gestapo/Stasi threats that all of you members of the journalistic crowd are afraid of him? You were just a coward: it was easy and cheap to shamelessly and gratuitously and cheaply insult me on your trashy column and never say anything about that jerk. You should be ashamed of yourself So much for independent and corageous journalism. You are a just a bunch of wimps being blackmailed by that sleazy jerk as he - in Nazi style. - has files on all of you.

• Gawker Media Cuts Jobs, Suspends Bonuses [Portfolio]
• Denton Shuffles Deck: Hires Snyder as M.E. of Gawker; Moe Tkacik Let Go [New York Observer]
• Black Friday At Gawker Media: 19 Layoffs at Blog Network [Alley Insider]
• April 2008: Nick Denton Shrinking Gawker Media, Ditching Three Sites [Alley Insider]
• July 2006: A Blog Mogul Turns Bearish on Blogs [New York Times]

I have some bad news. Here's the heart of it: we are cutting 19 of our
133 editorial positions and suspending bonus payments at the start of
next year. With the savings, we are increasing base pay and hiring 10
new people on the most commercially successful Gawker sites. But I
know that's scant consolation for the colleagues we're losing and for
those of you who have been enjoying the bonus windfalls from breakout
stories.

You can guess the reason for these brutal measures: the recession.
Sure, the company is currently profitable and advertising sales are up
by about 30% on their level of a year ago. Our biggest clients are
consumer electronics and entertainment companies that are relatively
well insulated. And, yes, this is not the first time I've predicted
doom: in July 2006, when we "battened down the hatches" and closed
down Sploid and Screenhead; and in April this year, when we spun off
Idolator, Gridskipper and Wonkette.

But now the credit crisis is clearly going to affect every sector of
the economy. Advertising buys typically plunge after the Christmas
shopping season, and 2009 is obviously going to be exceptionally
difficult. We have to prepare for the worst, now, rather than when the
worst comes upon us.

We never used to talk about the business side of the operation.
Traffic was the only concern; my belief was that juicy news would draw
the readers and the advertising would take care of itself. We were
patient; even if it took four years for a site to develop the audience
that finally registered with advertisers, we had the time. No longer.

Sites such as Consumerist, whose success has been measured more in
traffic and recognition than in revenue, now need to cover their
costs. I can't underline enough that this harsh commercial judgment is
no reflection whatsoever on the editorial teams that are being cut.

Each of these sites performs a vital function. Consumerist provides an
outlet for disgruntled consumers that exists nowhere else on the web;
Valleywag has given puffed-up Silicon Valley the prick it's long
needed; and Fleshbot manages to be classy and filthy at the same time.
The site leads and writers on all of our sites have done exactly what
we asked them to: work harder than the competition and grow the
audience. It's my commercial judgment that's been at fault.

One reason we're eliminating these positions is to reinforce the teams
on the sites with the most commercial appeal—Gizmodo, Kotaku,
Lifehacker and Gawker—and the properties such as Jezebel, io9,
Deadspin and Jalopnik which are poised to join them.

One new recruit we're confirming today is Gabriel Snyder from W
Magazine in Los Angeles who, as managing editor of Gawker.com, will
continue the site's evolution into a national news and entertainment
site. We are also hiring new contributors at Jezebel, Deadspin, Kotaku
and io9.

Even in the growing editorial teams we need to control costs. And that
means a new look at traffic bonuses. We've been spending $50,000 a
month on average on pageview bonuses. The scheme has made writers
hustle for traffic even in teams so large that there was a risk they
become lumbering. It's helped us hit a record 274m pageviews last
month, up 69% on last September.

Pageview bonuses will continue this quarter. And we are committed to
pageview incentives, and to measuring performance by a writer's
individual pageviews, in the long term. But a first quarter spike in
traffic — and the resulting bonus payments — could be dangerous if
advertising markets are troubled next year. And we're assuming that
the economy is so volatile that most of you would like a little bit
more predictability about your own income.

That's why we're suspending the pageview bonus for the first quarter
at least, but making up for some of the loss of income by raising pay.
If you haven't recently agreed to a new rate, your monthly base amount
will automatically be increased by 5% in January.

The news about the job and bonus cuts will be demoralizing. The golden
age of the blog is over, people will say. Gawker Media is behaving
like those big media companies that we mock so easily. I could come up
with some bullshit line about how much worse it would have been to
wait until we were forced to control costs; or how much more
unpleasant life will be at the many internet ventures and newspapers
that won't make it through the downturn. I could give you my
optimistic spin about the glorious future that awaits us on the far
side of this downturn.

But there is no escaping the fact that we're losing some excellent
colleagues and the environment next year will be bleak. The one
consolation is that there will be plenty of news for us to break —
starting with this email, which you are free to leak.

It's not the Feds. And the "job background check" line was a fraud. Furthermore, these PI's were hardly stealthy. They've been randomly knocking on the doors of people like my parents' neighbors, asking what they knew about me. In a small, tight-knit place like my hometown, this was guaranteed to immediately be passed on to my family and to me.

Which means that this investigation is either amateurish, or that whoever hired these PI's wanted me to know about it. I think a bit of both. I was back in my hometown last week, and got hold of the business card of the female PI. The next day, she appeared on my mom's street, knocking on the neighbor's doors, in search of...what? Info about my old Halloween costumes? It's hard to tell. I became convinced this wasn't a top-notch operation when this happened: she knocked on the door of my mom's house. My stepfather answered, and she asked if he knew me, and how. "Yes, I'm married to his mother," he replied.

This caused the PI to thank him and rapidly shut her notebook and start hustling off. My mom ran out and confronted her, as she was moving away at top speed. The PI allowed that she had a "client in New York" who was interested in me, but said little else. I unfortunately missed this episode, because a video clip would have been priceless.

Now: my own personal redemption story is sadly unoriginal. It's a little like David Carr's, but shorter, with fewer drugs, and not nearly as entertaining. It's also not a secret to anyone who knows me, making it pretty poor blackmail material. The practice of turning up at the houses of random tangential acquaintances could really not accomplish anything in an "investigative" sense. So let's call the whole endeavor what it really is: an attempt at intimidation.

So who hired these people? I can't say for sure, although the lies they used as their opening lines, along with their weird tactics, have given me some very strong suspicions. The only logical candidate, as far as I can tell, would be someone pissed off at something I wrote for Gawker, and looking to strike back in the sleaziest way possible. (Or maybe I'm wrong and I'm soon to get an awesome job offer!)

I'm just a blogger. I don't cover national security or break news of secret business mergers. But the idea that it's okay to hire private eyes as retaliation for people covering you didn't work out too well for HP, for (a much more consequential) example, where it turned into a huge scandal. It's fine to ask questions. But it's a dirty move to go around telling lies in order to ask questions, and hiring a PI is a pretty standard attempt to impose a chilling effect on reporting.

Late last week I got the PI, Steven Brown, on the phone. He didn't seem particularly happy to hear from me, despite his innate curiosity in me. When I first asked him why he was using a lie to ask around about me, he said "I don't really know." That made me laugh. Then he said, "Well, it's not something malicious." That made me laugh too. Then he hemmed and hawed and politely declined to tell me who his client is, and eventually got off the phone.

But hey, maybe there really is a fantastic job offer out there that I know nothing about? They wouldn't tell me, but maybe they'll tell you. If you'd like to ask the PI's about their work, you surely can:

Names: Steven Brown (THE BOSSMAN) and Rachael Singleton (THE RANDOM DOOR-KNOCKER)
Website: StevenKBrown.com
Email them!: Steve@stevenkbrown.com
Rachael@stevenkbrown.com
You can call their office!: 904-819-9700
Or call toll free!: 888-299-7574
Or fax them!: 904-826-1071
You can even call Rachael Singleton's cell phone (From her business card): 904-814-4074

If you're in the area, stop by their office (or write them a letter!) at 10604 Quail Ridge Dr., Ponte Vedra, FL, 32081. Here's a map.

Rachael Singleton stopped by my town's Historical Society a few weeks ago to look me up, for the "job," of course. She listed her home address on the sign-in sheet as 1069 Ardmore St., St. Augustine, FL 32084. That matches up with this listing for Mary R(achael) Singleton, at the phone number 904-940-1492. She was last seen rapidly fleeing my mom.

Steven Brown's claim to fame? He's the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Private Investigating. I suppose I should be proud to have such a worthy follower. Here are some photos of him:

Hey, mystery PI-hiring sleazo: why not save yourself some money and some embarrassing slinking around and just email me directly? I'm a pretty friendly guy.

Click here to listen to the voice mail.

Its out-of-touch publisher, Elisha R. Hagenbuckle, who resembles former Times publisher Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger, is "like a rhino with cage fever . . . muttering to himself . . . a parody of a man in animated concentration." He's horrified by such Web sites as Gawker and Defamer, asking, "Where the hell did it come from, this abiding compulsion to read about the breakups and breakdowns of third-rate celebrities?"

To which his son, a takeoff on Times publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., chirps, "That's the whole point, Dad. You've got to be snarky."

The odd thing here is that Punch retired as publisher in 1992 and as chairman in 1997, half a decade before Gawker started. The exchange would make more sense between Pinch and his own twentysomething son Arthur Gregg Sulzberger. But, hey, what's the point of slapping the "fiction" veil over your former employer if you can't take some liberties?

[Post]

The cheat sheet, via Sorgatz:

Personal faves include Krucoff stumbling across Emily's name, Julia musing about Google hits, Sklar standing in front of Balthazar, and Choire closing the house. But all of you! All of you have made America (and perhaps Russia) a better place!

Also, we are told that the book copy in this video, the FSU Middlebrow Remix of All The Sad Young Literary Men, has passed from Andrew Krucoff, who bought it from us at $890 (proceeds to the homeless), to the blogger 99, who bought it at $275 (discounted by the bundling of a date) from Krucoff (proceeds to a soup kitchen).

We are all witness to something very special! Don't you already feel more literarified and shit??

Last night, Manhattan Borough President and proud parrot-owner Scott Stringer made a surprise visit to the Gawker Media inner sanctum. The perma-Upper West Sider, who is said to be eyeing a run at citywide office, confessed affection for Gawker and old sister site Wonkette. Interested in the machinations of new media, Stringer regaled us with tales of how it used to be: when he worked for future Congressman Jerry Nadler in the '80s, Nadler's press releases went to old media types not by phone or fax or smoke signal, but by Stringer himself, who used to ride the subways around town all day to hand-deliver the pages to the city's newsdesks.

Huh. So... he thinks he will be the next mayor? And, even more ludicrous, he thinks the support of Gawker will somehow help? (We have our suspicious as to which Dem campaign consultants recommended this little visit.)

"Thayer Core was a blogger on one of those vicious new websites that had popped up in the last few years, displaying a hatred and vitriol that was unprecedented in civilized New York. The things the bloggers wrote made no sense [to Philip]. The comments made no sense to him. None of it appeared to be written by humans, at least not humans as he knew them. This was the problem with the Internet: The more the world opened up, the more unpleasant people appeared to be.

...Thayer Core was a bully, and like most bullies, he lacked courage. He was far too fearful to take physical action, striking out at the world instead from behind the safety of his computer."

While Ann Leary may not be genuinely upset at Hurley, it's impossible to believe she didn't see the PR value of writing a novel so seemingly parallel to her own life. And, as Sicha's story shows, she has not been shy about exploiting the opportunities that have arisen from the book: appearances on The View, Today and, if she chooses to accept, entertainment magazine Extra.

And Leary is clearly PR savvy. She wove a subplot into her novel about planting false rumors on the Web:

[Leary] wasn't angry about [the Gawker item], she said — in fact, she was validated.

You see, in her book, the angry wife sends in cruel and fake sightings of her cheating husband to none other than Gawker. "I think it's too bad that they're so desperately looking for this kind of thing," she said. "But it actually fits with the plot of my novel — how easy it is to place a rumor online and then to have it spin out of control."

Wait, so someone intentionally placed the false rumor about the Ann Leary/Elizabeth Hurley feud? Who would that be, exactly?

Noting, perhaps, that the chief beneficiary of any gossip column buzz around Leary's novel would be Leary and her publisher, Sicha asked if they didn't plant the Daily News item. Heavens, no, the publisher said.

But they didn't have to. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the life of Denis Leary could pluck it right from the pages of the novel on his own. Setting things up that way was (perhaps incidentally) smart — the book gets buzz, cheap or not, and the hands of Leary and her publisher remain clean. It's a fine, if not particularly original, publicity strategy, and it's probably a mistake — don't I know it — to mistake it for vengeful axe grinding.

[LA Times]

(Thanks to RavingRabbid and Anthony for the tips.)

You'll remember, I trust, that Rosen claimed that her ex-boyfriend might be sending us (in an attempt at "Gawkering me back") fabricated tips emails suggesting that she had dated one of the boys from the teen sex romp Superbad. We never received said Superbadian innuendos. Well, not exactly. We got two late night emails from the ex-boyfriend, a shaggy-haired fellow named Justin Grace. He'd like to set the record straight and resolve these issues as quickly as possible. By sending us copied-and-pasted Facebook messages. Why, Justin, why? Don't you know what we do here??

And what did they say, these Facebook messages that Grace so painstakingly shared with us? Well they elucidate the Superbad story a bit. Molly wrote to Justin at some point:

You know what else is awkward? My "relationship" with Jonah [Hill]. You guys haven't touched wieners just yet. In fact, you might never touch wieners. Basically we met at his movie set, hit it off, he took me out to the owner's box at a Red Sox game and then out to a party and then we got drunk and he had a "talk" about how he has a crush on me and wants to bone me but has a girlfriend in California, but is moving to New York in two months, and can we date when he moves here? I guess he basically is trying to put me "on reserve," like a very large pair of pants, which is something I guess you're entitled to as a celebrity. However, since said date he hasn't returned my texts (I have sent 2), so maybe he likes his girlfriend more than he remembers and is ignoring me.

He also clarifies his role in the whole fiasco in his first, non-Facebooky email:

My "involvement" with this saga basically boils down to calling Molly Jane Rosen a couple of names that would take Hemingway aback and responding to her (unprovoked) pleas not to "reverse-Gawker"(Really?) her about a story she passed on to me a few weeks back. I'm not going to give details, because it's not my place. Whether or not it was true is for her to know. But I would be damned if I didn't want to let her stew for a while in the same sort of limbo she's been putting Alex through over the past week.

This situation reminds us of other incidences where personal matters were tossed carelessly into the internet void. Lovelorn bloggers worked through their issues on this here site, Hamptons townie kids tried to speak their piece and got lambasted. Again. And who can forget when a Craigslist playa thought that leaving us a weird voicemail was the quickest route to privacy? That's not how the internet works! Nothing ever gets better by sending strange (hopefully drunken) emails to us at 1:30 in the damn morning. I mean, we love them but, really, you're only making things worse for yourself.

Sigh. Though to his credit, Justin did preface the "PS"-subject email that contained the Facebook missives with a helpful "not that I really want these published, but..." Heh. That's like being in the witness protection program and auditioning for a reality show. But! Aha! Could this Facebook message be one the of the evil, ominously portended fakes? Who the hell knows! And who knows if we'll ever find out. For their sake, we hope these crazy kids will use their considerable smarts (she went to Brandeis, he's at Columbia) and decide to stop sending us stuff. Here's our advice: go meet somewhere in Morningside Heights. Maybe Tom's? Maybe Rack and Soul? Sit down. Have a nice chat. Work this thing out. We need not be involved (though we totally will be if you want). Just remember: it never gets better here. We're telling you this because we care about you.

How the Internet is re-describing how we understand privacy, intimacy and personal history is, I think... a [lifestyle] issue, and the fact that the story — an 8,000-word story — has already, in 6 ours or so, attracted more than 600 comments (most of them having nothing to do with why we published the piece as a cover story) leads me to believe a lot of folks agree.

In other words, generating a lot of noise is a journalistic end unto itself. Or at least proof of merit. That's such a forward-thinking, blog-ish way to think. Gawker-esque, some might say. But now, barring some kind of technical concern, the paper seems to be having second thoughts, because the internet can be cruel. Given the subject of Gould's piece, that's very meta.

Of course, as Gould is surely aware, shutting down comments isn't going to stop the invective; it's just going to push it onto email, personal blogs, Twitters and even instant messaging status updates:

...maybe that's true. Nick's made dumb hires before. And maybe it's why Nick needled him the other week. (Nick says he just needed an excuse to post the embarrassing story).

But—if Gutfeld's tale is true, it's certainly not something I knew about. I just make fun of Greg because I think he's annoying.

(Full disclosure: I met Greg once, long ago, at a party at Nick's place. And he was kinda funny, in person, in a rude, fratty way. I think New Yorkers just find that schtick so amusing because it's a novelty in the media scene? There can't be many meathead state school grads at the Observer.)

Gutfeld: Nick Denton 'Doesn't Like People Saying No to Him Apparently' [FishbowlNY]

I believe Gawker owe's ACSH a correction with regard to: http://gawker.com/380338/whole-foods-environmentalists-support-cockroach-invasion

Very much like the Harvard School of Public Health, ACSH is funded by a diverse mix of corporations, foundations and individuals.
We have individual donors around the country who believe that the Ralph Nader inspired activist groups do not have a monopoly on
what is in their best interest.

We are very up-front that we accept no strings attached donations from a wide range of corporations. Our scientific advisory board, nearly 400
strong, serve as volunteers. Together with our board of trustees, http://www.acsh.org/about/pageID.7/default.asp
the advisors http://www.acsh.org/about/pageID.89/default.asp we are led by an impressive group of scientists, physicians, and policy advisors. Our reports go through two peer-reviews: internal (advisors)
and outside- where they are published in independent scientific journals. We have a 30 year history of going where the science takes us- even when that science runs counter to the interest
of our funders.

We are concerned that reporters often ask about funding only when some if it may come from industry. Reporters often fail to ask who funds groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council-
and how those funding sources may introduce biases as well (i.e. from a foundation whose stated mission is to remove more chemicals from the market.)

Interestingly, in the cases when we say something "anti-business" — they never ask who funds us :-)

And we are only called "conservative" when we aren't supporting stem cell research, opposing cigarette smoking, and promoting the use of Gardasil.
Thanks
Jeff

Our assailer, Marine Corps veteran and big cock-haver Matt Sanchez, made his name in the right-wing blogosphere by complaining last year about the terrible mistreatment he was receiving at the hands of those vicious military-hating students at Columbia, where he was an undergrad. The fawning over him by conservative media outlets died down a bit after his former career as gay porn star "Rod Majors" came out. But he says he doesn't like men anymore because gays are like Islamic jihadis, or something! Republicans are so complicated.

[Photos: from Ext212's Flickr]

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]

1. Greed: GIST all who followed the herd on Wall Street into the sub-prime mess. We could start with Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch who walked away with over $160 million of investors' money after tossing Merrill to the wolves. And Charles Prince of Citigroup, whose chairman, Bob Rubin, had to go hat-in-hand to Dubai to get some oil money to bail out Citi after they nearly went bankrupt, got over $30 million to say "sayonara." Citigroup will lay off 24,000, increasing the government's unemployment insurance pay-outs and reducing the taxes collected from those individuals. GIST should include the golden parachute payouts, the houses, the cars, the boats, the Rolex watches, and the titanium finished Sub-zero refrigerators of all CEO's who played in the sub-prime sandbox.

2. Gluttony: Making Medicare or Medicaid pay for your diabetes because you overeat.

6. Sloth: Living at home with your parents after age 23.

7. Pride: Taking steroids so that your biceps would look like Sammy Sosa's. The steroid scandal is costing the U.S. mega dollars — hearings, special prosecutors endless discovery and testimony. And, of course, the rise of the role model as "cheater."

Stupid and Sinful: How America Can be Number One Again [Huffington Post]

• John McCain apologized for telling the following joke, which will surely come back to haunt him as the Republican nominee for president: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
• Movie star Mike Myers sent an apology to the White House after a skit on Saturday Night Live mentioned Chelsea. The skit was an episode of the fictional show Wayne's World in which Wayne, played by Myers, and his sidekick Garth, played by Dana Carvey, said of the Gore daughters, "If they were a president, they'd be Babe-raham Lincoln." Then: "Chelsea... well, she's a babe in development." The tame joke prompted not only an apology from Myers but from Carvey and show executive producer Lorne Michaels.
• When New York Magazine writer (and Gawker alum) Jesse Oxfeld was a Stanford student, he was fired from the Stanford Daily for violating a ban on writing about fellow student Chelsea. He parlayed the experience into a gig as a Chelsea pundit on TV and radio.
• Another college journalist at the time, some chump running the UC Berkeley student paper, wussed out and apologized for a satirical column about Chelsea just because it said "Show your spirit on Chelsea's bloodied carcass" and printed her address. God only knows what became of that guy, but it probably involves some dead-end job working nights.

[Slate]

[Jim Behrle's Kreepie Kats discuss whether Gawker has jumped the shark. Again.]

Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster [NYT]