Culture

Gawker Writer Quits After Just One Day of Work

by mtippett | January 4, 2008 at 03:23 pm

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An embarrassing moment for Nick Denton...

All is not well in the house of Denton. We hear that just one day after media reporter Richard Morgan began at Gawker.com, he's already quit. Just yesterday, site owner and (new) managing editor Nick Denton made much ado about the Website's brave new image for 2008, including a role for Morgan covering the TV networks. But it turns out Denton's pledge to elevate more serious journalistic work on the blog wasn't as fulfilled as Morgan had hoped. "I believed what Nick said about making the site more reported, making it more mainstream, and, vainly, thought that's why he hired me," Morgan told us over IM just now.

This photo courtesy of Dave Winer at Flickr.

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mtippett

at 15:36 on January 4th, 2008

Morgan also had this to say:

"[Denton] is erratic," he told us. There is no vision beyond page views. I was announced as being some kind of television beat writer. And I spent the day reading TV blogs and e-mailing and calling and meeting with TV folks. And Nick would tell me to post, like, something about Us Weekly getting Ashlee Simpson's engagement wrong. And then he wanted me to do another on Playgirl."
"He is obsessed with the gay mafia," Morgan added, which is confusing, because we never thought of Denton as being self-obsessed. Big-headed maybe, but in a purely physical way only. "Jesus spent three days in Hell," Morgan said. "I could only handle one.""

caroliiine

at 06:42 on January 5th, 2008

Hey, thanks for digging up my photo -- I figured I should pull it, though, since it isn't actually "mine." One of our production guys took it, and he actually does do freelance photography now so I feel a bit awkward using it without his permission. (Should probably do something about its presence in my Flickr account too...eek)

mtippett

at 08:07 on January 5th, 2008

No worries Caroliiine. Wouldn't want you to get into trouble :)

Jordan Yerman

at 08:25 on January 5th, 2008

I think they're learning the difference between playing checkers and playing chess: pageviews, in and of themselves, are only one piece of the web pie.