Gawker Eats One of Its Own

Sam Gustin writes: Gawker Media overlord Nick Denton has driven the final nail into the coffin of loved/hated Silicon Valley gossip website Valleywag, folding the site into Gawker.com.

Valleywag editor Owen Thomas, a veteran tech scribe, will become a columnist for Gawker.com. In addition, Denton has put Consumerist.com, the company's Consumer Reports-for-the-snarky-set, up for sale.

For months, Denton has been predicting a coming Ice Age in internet advertising. His warnings grew shriller yesterday, when he predicted that online advertising will fall by up to 40 percent next year.

To prepare, Denton had already jettisoned several sites, slashed his staff  -- including most of Valleywag's writers -- and suspended the blog network's controversial pay-for-page-views bonus system. He has long bemoaned Valleywag's lack of appeal to online advertisers. But Denton's latest move carries a particular kind of black irony, given that Valleywag has gleefully chronicled tech industry layoffs in recent weeks.

In under three years, Valleywag had become a fixture on the tech scene, with its mix of "face-stabbing" Silicon Valley gossip and sarcastic commentary on industry news. Digital newsmakers large and small -- as well as the reporters who write about them -- came in for criticism that ranged from mild to downright mean.

In the wake of the credit crunch and ensuing economic crisis, some observers spied the end of Web 2.0, the frothy internet phenomenon characterized by lofty ambitions and little revenue. Valleywag's demise may not be the final word on the matter, but it is more evidence that the latest internet bubble -- mercifully short-lived as it was -- is now over.