Nicked Off: The Curious Path of Gawker's Chief

When the history books get written about the dawn of the new age of journalism—the post-print, beyond-TV, instant-analysis form of media that dominates mass communication these days (remember, you're reading this on a blog, on a digital-only product)—there will be a chapter devoted to Nick Denton.

Denton is the mad genius behind Gawker Media: a New York-based empire of such vertical web properties as Gawker, Gizmodo, Deadspin, Fleshbot, Jezebel and four others. And befitting his status as a media mogul, he's got his very own lengthy profile in the current issue of the New Yorker.

"Like all gossip merchants, Denton fancies himself a truth-teller who relishes flouting the conventions of good taste and privilege," Ben McGrath writes about Denton, a 44-year-old who was raised in London and who had a traditional print journalism career there before heading to the United States in the early part of the new millennium and starting Gawker in 2002.

Denton comes off as a supreme networker who takes a ruthless approach to his business. If a site isn't performing well, he either sells it or kills it. If a writer isn't getting the clicks he thinks a story should, they won't get paid as much. And if an editor does something not to his liking, they'll be looking for another job soon enough.

Yet Denton seems to dispute the characterization of himself as a mogul. "There are no titans," he's quoted as saying during a meal with his editors. He was talking about others in the media space, and very possibly was including himself in the mix. One reason for this might well be money, as McGrath writes:

Denton also is not nearly so rich as his forebears, which is one reason that people have long speculated about whether he will cash out of Gawker Media, assuming that a nine-figure payday would serve as the ultimate rejoinder to his doubters and condescenders. As it is, given the thin margins of online publishing, Denton’s cultural impact greatly exceeds his revenues, which are somewhere on the order of fifteen to twenty million dollars a year. His ownership stake in the company is around sixty to seventy per cent, and every so often he attempts to consolidate by buying back shares that he has given to current and former employees. The rate he offered earlier this year would have put the company’s value at only thirty million dollars, or a fraction of what most analysts have estimated.

And there lies the big question. Is Denton really more concerned about his cultural impact or his revenues? It would seem, according to the people McGrath spoke to, it's the former. "The villain public persona is not a hundred-per-cent true,” said A. J. Daulerio, the editor-in-chief of the Gawker sports blog Deadspin, said. “It’s probably eighty-per-cent true.”

To read the full profile of Denton in the New Yorker, click here.

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