The shake-up at Gawker on Monday – its first acquisition, the firing of a well-regarded editor – is still reverberating in New York media circles for one reason: no one seems to get it, exactly.
Not the well-regarded editor. Not current and former staffers. Not media onlookers, who’ve watched Gawker grow from a snarky Manhattan media blog to a sprawling — and yes, more "mainstream" — publication. Perhaps not even Nick Denton himself (I’ll get to that in a second).
The latest chapter in Gawker history provokes two main questions:
1. Why would Denton fire Gabriel Snyder, an editor who doubled the site’s traffic and oversaw a smattering of scoops (the "McSteamy" sex tape, the "Balloon Boy" Dad’s accomplice, Harold Ford’s "tax dodge," et al)?
2.