In 2009, blog network Gawker Media introduced a new, stricter commenting system in an attempt to free the site from certain readers who were dominating comment threads. Nieman Journalism Lab has the full rundown of how the system now works, which includes trusted commenters having greater access to discussions and most recent comments placed at the top rather than bottom of threads to steer discussion.

“We’ll be able to encourage the kind of discussion that *we* want – not one that is dominated merely by the most prolific of our commenters. It’s our party; we get to decide who comes,” wrote founder Nick Denton at the time.

A graph on the blog of Gawker Media chief technology officer Tom Plunkett shows an initial dip in comment volume when the changes were first made, followed by a steep incline:

Though there were some calls to do so, purging commenter accounts is not a solution for the out-of-control commenter community. Nor is a large moderation staff. We believe pruning, and a commenting platform as we have implemented, will lead to increased participation, while at the same time encouraging quality. This data, and the subjective opinion of many, seem to back this assertion.

Full Nieman Journalism Lab report at this link…

• Nieman Journalism Lab: Gawker stirs up online commenting with new #tips tags
• Poynter: NY Times introduces unmoderated comments for ‘trusted commenters’
• WordPress rolls out Twitter and Facebook comments options
• Telegraph writer attacks ‘spooky’ Lib Dem ‘posse’ for critical comments
• Comment Central: New commenting system for Times Online

While others pour over pageviews and underscore uniques, Gawker Media has been quietly working on a new metric, one designed to measure so-called “reader affection”. This new metric is called “branded traffic” and is, according to Nieman Journalism Lab, “both more nebulous and more significant” than traditional forms of measurement.

The idea is to measure the number of visitors that arrive at the site via a direct search for its name or variations on its branding, or by typing in the site URL directly, and distinguish them from more incidental traffic.

The metric comes from a simple compound: direct type-in visits plus branded search queries in Google Analytics. In other words, Gawker Media is bifurcating its visitors in its evaluation of them, splitting them into two groups: the occasional audience, you might call it, and the core audience.

The original Gawker release highlights the value the site places on turning the internet passerby into an affectionate reader:

While distributing content across the web is essential for attracting the interest of internet passersby, courting these wanderers, massaging them into occasional visitors, and finally gaining their affection as daily readers is far more important. This core audience – borne of a compounding of word of mouth, search referrals, article recommendations, and successive enjoyed visits that result in regular readership – drives our rich site cultures and premium advertising products.

Full post at this link…

• Nieman Journalism Lab: MinnPost editor on new audience building strategy
• Poynter: Five ways to turn traffic spikes into return visits
• @SoE: Guardian reporter: planning to use Hitwise figures in Telegraph marketing again?
• Big numbers vs local audience – what should regional newspapers chase?
• Gawker: Gawker to sell three blogs from its network

Dramatically named blogger and journalism entrepreneur Lockhart Steele has guested on mediabistro’s Media Beat video series in the last two days, with the last episode appearing later this afternoon. Steele began blogging around the beginning of the decade while working in magazines. He was recruited by Nick Denton as Gawker began to pick up traffic and later became managing editor of the site, seeing it expand from just a handful of editorial staff to around 150.

In the second installment of the Media Beat series, below, Steele discusses getting traffic through Twitter and Facebook, diversifying revenue streams online, and “looking for niches where we can be a little bit weird”.

Follow this link for the first installment, in which Steele discusses starting out in blogging and breaking away from Gawker to establish his own blogging network.

• Gawker: Gawker to sell three blogs from its network
• Mediabistro: New Gawker.TV powered by interns; hopes site will sell ads
• Wired: Q and A with Gawker’s Nick Denton
• Mashable: How paywalls are changing social media strategies
• Q&A with hyperlocal site boasting 15,000 newsletter subscribers

Via Vanity Fair (and others) we learn of a tweet fight between former technology analyst and CEO of the Business Insider site, Henry Blodget, and Reuters’ financial journalist and blogger Felix Salmon.

It all started when Salmon poked fun – via Twitter – at Blodget’s business model and the way Business Insider had illustrated a banking story with a picture of two women kissing.

This kicked off a long dispute between the two over media strategy; not a simple old vs new spat, but an untangling of ethical issues for online publishers.

Never to miss a traffic opportunity, Blodget has posted the entire conversation on Business Insider here, in the form of a slideshow.

Blodget, fond of tweet by tweet mini-essays, also responded with a posting on business models.

Salmon then responded here, in length, on the Reuters blog.

Blogger and journalist Mathew Ingram has a thoughtful post on the whole episode at this link. An extract:

So what are smart online media outlets doing? Two things: One is focusing on building businesses such as conferences and events, as well as subscription-based, proprietary content (something Business Insider is also experimenting with). The other – and this is what I think Salmon was driving at – is thinking about traffic and pageviews in a different way. Not all pageviews are the same, and as a result not all CPMs are the same. Does forcing readers to click through multiple pages to view a slideshow add any real value? No. This is the digital equivalent of newspapers throwing extra copies into a ravine (or dumping them at a taxi stand) to boost circulation.

And elswhere on Twitter: Gawker’s founder Nick Denton backs Blodget, while writer Andrew Keen calls for the Business Insider CEO to return to Wall Street.

• Business Insider lets readers ‘embed’ posts
• Is CNN about to buy Mashable?
• The truth about funding investigative journalism 2.0
• Business Insider: Chart of the Day – 24% of US newspapers don’t use digital delivery platforms
• Mashable: What impact has the NY Times paywall had on traffic?

Gawker is encourage commenters and readers of its site to share news, links and tips using a new tagging system.

Using a text form on the site, tagging a message with #tips for example will send it to a ‘tips’ page, where all similarly tagged submissions will be pulled together to create a stream.

Individual hashtags for different sections of the site have been introduced as part of the new Gawker Open Forums, reports Nieman Journalism Lab.

“[A]s the front pages of our sites become ever more professional, it’s even more important to allow anarchy to bubble up from below. The goal is to blur the line between our editors and commenter-contributors,” publisher Nick Denton told Nieman.

Starred contributors – e.g. those members of Gawker’s commenting community that have been given a star rating by the site’s editors – will have their tagged submissions immediately fed to the aggregated pages. Other tagged contributions will need to be flagged up by these starred users.

Full story at this link…

• Nieman Journalism Lab: Barriers to entry can improve quality and quantity of reader comments, says Gawker
• Mediabistro: New Gawker.TV powered by interns; hopes site will sell ads
• Fishbowl NY: Sacked Gawker editor says Denton’s role is a conflict of interest
• Felix Salmon: Gawker sums show why it’s a ‘highly profitable media co.’
• NYC 3.0: Kommons – creating a real-time news platform for specific communities

Well, that’s Ian Shapira’s suggested headline for a follow-up story on Gawker, after the site picked up on and heavily excerpted his story on ‘branding consultant’ Anne Loehr.

Gawker included a link to his original article – but only at the very bottom of the post.

Shapira’s initial happiness at having his story featured on Gawker turned to disillusion as he questioned the benefits of traffic driven by Gawker to his original piece, he writes in a follow-up piece.

Gawker may make money from advertising around its aggregation of original reporting from other sources, which have invested time and money into the report, but does a spike in traffic help the Washington Post’s bottom line, he asks.

“After talking with Denton [Nick Denton, Gawker founder], Nolan [Hamilton Nolan, the Gawker author] and others for this article, I still want a fluid blogosphere, but one where aggregators – newspapers included – are more transparent about whom they’re heavily excerpting. They should mention the original source immediately. And if bloggers want to excerpt at length, a fee would be the nice, ethical gesture,” he writes.

Full article at this link…

• paidContent.org: ‘The fallacy of the link economy’ for news sites
• Citizen Media Law Project: The laws of news aggregation
• Public Agenda: Private newspapers in Africa hit by advertising slump
• Gawker alleges computer cut-backs for WSJ.com staff
• Mediabistro: New Gawker.TV powered by interns; hopes site will sell ads

Journalism.co.uk is going to trial a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

News and features

• How to: write the perfect press release for journalists
• BBC offers news video to Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph and Independent websites
• MPs back redundancy pay for freelance journalists
• Smart Moves: Peter Waters becomes Eastern Daily Press’ 12th editor

Ed’s Picks

• Nick Denton: Gawker revenues up 45 per cent in first half of 2009
• Press Gazette: Dutch court says tapping of journalist’s phone was illegal
• Common Sense Journalism: Tweets and a news ’story’ – stop confounding the two
• Evening Standard: Andrew Gilligan on council ‘propaganda’ newspapers
• Econsultancy: An A-Z guide to online copywriting
• Publish2 Blog: Introducing ’social journalism’ tools to Publish2

Tip of the Day

• RSS on the go with Google Reader

#FollowJourn

• @marieteather/freelancer

On the Editors’ Blog

• NUJ Release: Strike action halted at Trinity Mirror Birmingham titles
• NewsInnovation videos from @newsmatters: featuring @kevglobal, @currybet, @markng, @simonw, @willperrin

• Evening Standard: Andrew Gilligan on council ‘propaganda’ newspapers
• Media Release: London Lite to publish last edition on Friday
• Gilligan gets on board with Greenwich.co.uk
• Azerbaijan publishes latest media ‘blacklist’
• Another council freesheet bites the dust

The plunge has already been pretty terrifying for a range of companies from Yahoo and IAC to the newspapers,” writes Gawker founder Nick Denton, referring to his previous prediction that media companies should prepare for a 40 per cent downturn in advertising revenue over the economic cycle.

“But I was wrong in one respect: a few premium internet brands, Gawker’s among them, have withstood the advertising apocalypse.”

Full post at this link…

• Ad Age: Internet media employment at peak since 2001 despite falls elsewhere
• Washington Post: ‘Whiny WashPost Reporter Makes His Point: Respect the Genuine Article’
• Jo Wadsworth: Where is advertising moving online?
• Ernst & Young: Online search will help reverse fortunes of display and classified ads
• paidContent.org: CondeNet cuts staff across all departments

From Politico: a report on a panel at the Institute’s Ideas Festival in Colarado, asking ‘What’s the News Worth to You?’

For us Brits, this is the interesting part:

“During the panel’s Q&A, Gawker Media’s Nick Denton sarcastically thanked the American newspaper industry for being so unaggressive, making it possible for ‘thugs’ like him to succeed.

“Conversely, Denton said he’d never set up shop in England. ‘Every single day, those editors get up and try to kill each other,’ said Denton. Not so in the U.S.”

(Hat-tip: Martin Stabe)

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• NYTimes.com: Seattle Post-Intelligencer goes web only
• #FollowJourn: @martinstabe/online editor
• Fishbowl NY: Sacked Gawker editor says Denton’s role is a conflict of interest
• Video blogging hits Shropshire
• Does Guardian ‘World Cup Wall’ show a nation’s growing interest in football?

Gawker’s Nick Denton explains the changes here, or you can read a post from Seth at Defamer at this link…

In a nutshell, Defamer is being merged into Gawker.com, and its current writers are to move onto pastures new.

• NYTimes.com: Life after ‘snarky’ – the future for the gossip site writers
• Fishbowl NY: Sacked Gawker editor says Denton’s role is a conflict of interest
• Mediabistro: New Gawker.TV powered by interns; hopes site will sell ads
• Gawker to pay bloggers based on page views they generate
• Nick Denton: Gawker revenues up 45 per cent in first half of 2009

Inspired by three online news items (David Carr on NYTimes.com; Gawker’s Nick Denton / Jonah Bloom of AdAge), John Duncan argues on Garcia International that the ‘recession is (ultimately) good for online publishing.’

“There comes a time for most orthodoxies when they just plain run out of doxy,” he writes…”The biggest mistake newspapers made in the internet era was to devalue content by dishing it out for free.”

His point is perhaps clearest in his final paragraph:

“What we are learning now is that a user of a free product does not have remotely the same value as a customer of a paying one.”

Full story…

• Radio 4 Today: ‘Crisis in the economics of media industry’
• Editors Weblog: French government considering ‘Google tax’
• Journalism Iconoclast: Journalists should rethink the newsroom
• Andrew Keen: ‘The internet will devour newspapers’
• Media release: BBC announces launch of web-connected TV product

Nick Denton’s decision to merge gossip website Valleywag with Gawker marks the end of the micropublishing business model, according to Felix Salmon.

• Fishbowl NY: Sacked Gawker editor says Denton’s role is a conflict of interest
• Gawker to pay bloggers based on page views they generate
• Vanityfair.com: Business Insider’s Henry Blodget vs Reuters’ Felix Salmon
• Felix Salmon: Gawker sums show why it’s a ‘highly profitable media co.’
• Mediabistro: New Gawker.TV powered by interns; hopes site will sell ads

Head of Gawker.com, Nick Denton, announced on Friday that he was letting go 19 members of the editorial staff in a ‘preemptive move’, including Moe Tkacik, who was only recently recruited. Page view bonuses for the first quarter of next year are also to be cancelled in light of the ‘upcoming fiscal crisis’.

• Telegraph.co.uk: BBC spends £17.5m on staff bonuses
• Radar: Gawker cuts staff pay rate for 2nd consecutive quarter
• Announcement of pay cut for Rusbridger and no bonus for McCall following NUJ comments
• Fishbowl NY: Sacked Gawker editor says Denton’s role is a conflict of interest
• Why Nick Denton wouldn’t set up shop in UK

This isn’t where we normally flag up job listings (for full job listings visit this part of the site) but this is an interesting one – since it was posted on September 2, the advert has received 6,722 views, and 150 comments. Manhattan media news and gossip site, Gawker.com, is inviting applications for the post of managing editor.

The incumbent, Nick Denton, says that he needs to get back to his ‘other job’, so is calling for a permanent replacement to join the team.

While admitting he’s never watched an episode of the Hills, he does say it’s mandatory to be ‘plugged into both society gossip and mass culture’. Follow the link here for full details.

• Guardian: Perez Hilton to blog for ITV
• Avid Life Media in $20m bid for Perez Hilton site, says Gawker
• Archant and Telegraph in geotagged search launches
• PCC rules Daily Mail not in breach of code over Iain Dale diary piece
• If you’re a fan, please nominate Journalism.co.uk in the Mashable Open Web Awards 2009

Gawker associate editor Maggie Shnayerson, who was fired by boss Nick Denton on Sunday night, says Denton’s role as editor and publisher of the media gossip site creates ‘a conflict of interest’.

Shnayerson said Denton was trying to make the site too mainstream.

“Gawker shouldn’t be a depository for the latest viral video,” she told Fishbowl NY

• Mediabistro: New Gawker.TV powered by interns; hopes site will sell ads
• Is Gawker losing it?
• Why Nick Denton wouldn’t set up shop in UK
• Forbes.com: Did mainstream media ignore the AT&T iPad hack story?
• Defamer.gawker.com: Defamer ‘folds into’ Gawker