On Friday, Gawker’s Editor-in-Chief Max Read posted a memo about his plans for 2015 at Gawker. The way Gawker’s homepage is set up has been frustrating, Read wrote. And so they’re going diagonal.
The basic structure is simple. Rather than publish everything directly to the home page, we’ll publish our stories to a set of beat-focused sub-blogs, some of which already exist and some of which will be launched in January. From those “diagonals”, the best and most representative work—original stories, reported news, personal writing, smart arguments, breakout viral, breaking news—will be shared to the front page, which will update at a somewhat slower rate than it currently does. Everything will be pushed to Facebook and Twitter, as well as to a comprehensive Gawker “news feed.”
The sub-blogs include and will include Valleywag, Defamer, and ones on the Internet, media and justice. Those larger topics could be spun off into more specific ones, Read wrote.
He also wrote about what Gawker is and what it isn’t.
Coverage that guides doesn’t need to always be reactive, stilted, or distanced the way “explainers” tend to be: We can break stories that cut through bullshit and expose backdoor dealings, a la Sony, or drive conversation and buzz with well-argued and unflinching opinion, a la Cosby.
