Gawker seems to think so. They might be right.
“I can’t bear to look at the current site,” Denton said. “It is so constricting.” Denton hopes the new design will draw attention to original work, not just scandalous news of Lindsay Lohan running over baby carriages. “The most popular story is not always the one we are most proud of,” he added. “There’s too much sex.” He also hopes to emphasize the growing video network with the new design, which received 17.3 million unique U.S. visitors in September. The new site will also create more space for video ads. “The new layout is optimized for video, so it’s going to be great for Gawker.TV,” says Richard Blakeley, Gawker.TV’s editor.
In the days of Twitter and Facebook, personal profiles turned soap boxes may be rendering traditional blog writing obsolete. Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo recently reported on the subject, interviewing bloggers and editors to define the difference between an “article” and a “blog post.” As technology expands and the Internet takes on such a life of its own, a blogger’s clarity of purpose can become a bit blurred. When large media organizations re-tool their current strategies to disseminate news more quickly through an array of social media channels, it’s promising to see an emphasis placed on original news and richer multi-media content.
