Gawker 1, Scientologists 0

Remember all that noise a few weeks back about the collapse of Gawker? Yeah, so much for that.

The gossip site has been setting traffic records in its first month of owner Nick Denton's editorship. According to The New York Times, the post containing a nine-minute video of Tom Cruise raving about the joys of Scientology has been viewed over 2.3 million times. And that figure doesn't even reflect traffic to the numerous other posts Gawker has devoted to the subject since. Overall unique visitors for January stand at 13.6 million and counting.

Of course, there was a reason this traffic bonanza fell to Gawker and not one of the other sites that had access to the clip: Denton was the only owner willing to risk a lawsuit by L. Ron Hubbard's notoriously litigious followers. But, judging from an item in today's Page Six, it looks like the cult -- er, Church -- has elected to spin the episode rather than rehash it in court. Says a Scientology spokeswoman, "Having presented these selective and out-of-context excerpts with the intent of creating both controversy and ridicule resulted in people searching for Church of Scientology Web sites."

UPDATE, 10:33 a.m.: Per Felix's comment nitpicking, he's right, and the Times article was wrong: 13.6 million was the number of visits, not unique visitors. See for yourself here or here.