Developing: Print Media Threatened by Internets

The current New York Magazine dives deep inside the navel with seven sprawling pages on Gawker. The rather tame procedural is conducted by Vanessa Grigoriadis, who's up front with the disclosures: Her NY Times wedding announcement was savaged by Gawker, New York Magazine currently employs two former Gawker editors, and Grigoriadis peeped managing editor Choire Sicha’s underwear.

So have the hunters become the hunted? Not really. The article is not so much a take-down as it is a thoughtful analysis of the turbulent waters roiling New Media and Old Media, as seen through the lens darkly of millionaire publisher Nick Denton’s flagship property – loved by some, despised by others, but read by all. In advance of a highbrow think-piece on Gawker in the next n + 1, it seems the anti-Gawker gripers are having their moment.

For those with sense enough to skip reading the whole thing, thereby sparing themselves an unshakable feeling of enervation sure to last through Wednesday, we’ve parsed a few of the low points:

• “We’re a drug ring, not a bunch of bloggers.” -- one unnamed Gawker employee.
  
• According to “satirist” Neal Pollack, Gawker writer Josh Stein “is an emotionally manipulative premature ejaculator with a Serge Gainsbourg tattoo on his back.” (Stein counters that only two of those things are true.)
  
• Everyone’s invited to Nick Denton’s Soho apartment for Halloween; the article featured a stalker-esque snapshot of the mogul, who refused to be interviewed but has posted a rejoinder on his personal blog.

We asked sometime Gawker mascot Andrew Krucoff what he thought of all this: "Vanessa contacted me for the article and I talked to her on the phone for almost an hour, mainly how Gawker has evolved over the past couple of years, something she largely neglects to show in the piece. Our conversation was whittled down to approximately zero quotes. The voice of truth and dissent gets muffled again. But I'm sure I was talking out of my ass."

Disclosure: We were somewhat recently hailed by Gawker as the 1010WINS of the blogosphere. (Also, we’ve slept with just about everyone in the Gawker Media Empire, in exchange for drugs, which we never received.) Let us know what you really think about Gawker and their smarty-pants commenters – rumble anyone? – in the comments. Your AccuWeather forecast and metro traffic report after the jump.