CORRECT: Gawker -- Gasp! -- Grows Up And Gets Respectable

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- On Aug. 1, the widely followed Romenesko Web site posted links to more than a dozen stories about News Corp.'s agreement to buy Dow Jones & Co. For serious media watchers, it was an orgy of information.

I was drawn to this headline: "WSJ editor: Deal won't change what we do in the newsroom." This memo reinforced my hope that the Journal (a Dow Jones unit, as is MarketWatch, the publisher of this column) intended to remain uncompromised.

Gawker.com's Doree Shafrir did the piece. Yes, from that Gawker, the wisecracking site that revels in mocking the rich, famous and not-so-famous.

The flagship of Gawker Media is gaining respectability in the dreaded mainstream media. Gawker is -- gasp! -- growing up, and should no longer be viewed as a fringe publication.

For one thing, Gawker breaks news. The Smoking Gun could be envious about its knack for obtaining media leaders' memos.

I've also noticed Gawker's restraint. A year ago, I wrote a column entitled "Why I stopped reading Gawker." The site's mean-spirited tone made me cringe. These days, Gawker's style is playful, not obnoxious.

Also, for all of us occasional layabouts who delight in the site at slack moments, it's wittier than ever. The work of Managing Editor Choire Sicha and editors Alex Balk, Emily Gould, Shafrir and Joshua David Stein shines through. Plus, many of the folks who send in comments on Gawker's items are just as sharp as the writers.

Under visionary Nick Denton, Gawker Media itself is on a roll. A site known as Shylock Blogging estimated this week that Gawker Media rings up annual revenue of $52 million.

Gawker.com still isn't to everyone's taste. Its Gawker Stalker map, which consists of readers writing in celebrity sightings around New York, infuriates some celebrities (or, more to the point, their publicity-conscious handlers). Jimmy Kimmel dressed down Gawker's Gould for it on "Larry King Live" in April, in a classic generation-gap scene.

But Gawker is more than a blip on the radar for media big shots. For instance, Gawker got a copy of an email by Rick Stengel, Time's managing editor, urging writers to step up their work for Time's Web site. "I knew it would be on Gawker that day," the chagrined Stengel acknowledged.

Gawker remains the scourge of the pretentious and pompous, the people who take themselves so seriously.

I suspect that Gawker's editors will say that they hated reading this column. After all, I'm taking them seriously.

Gawker's 'it girl'

A touchstone for Gawker is Julia Allison, one of the most media-savvy twentysomethings in New York. As a fixture of the cocktail-party circuit, Allison has developed an intense -- if bizarre -- following as Gawker's resident "it girl."

One Gawker editor said that Allison is so omnipresent that she has become "our Paris Hilton." That's where the comparison ends, though, since Allison stresses that she doesn't take drugs and seldom drinks alcohol.

Allison takes pains to note that she has a fledgling career, apart from Gawker. As the editor at large of Star magazine, she often appears on cable-TV news shows to talk about starlet train wrecks. She also writes a dating and relationships column for Time Out New York. Still, I suspect, her greatest notoriety comes from Gawker's wacky fixation with her.

"Gawker is trying to create their own celebrities, so they've used me," Allison pointed out.

Well, the site picked the right person; apparently its readers can't get enough.

On July 26, she drew 64 responses, an unusually high number, after Gawker posted an item about the contents of her refrigerator. The following day, Allison got 62 comments when the site dished that she had been lip-synching a Fergie song while driving a car.

The responses people write aren't always flattering, to say the least. Many are juvenile and a few downright rude. "I have aextremely thick skin," Allison said. "I don't take myself seriously."

She has come a long way from the day that Gawker first wrote something unkind about her. "I spent the whole day crying," Allison recalls.

As for Gawker's readers, she shrugs that a lot of them are "very frustrated people."

Perhaps many people are jealous of the ambitious Wilmette, Ill., native, who came to New York City in 2004 and started as an intern with Mediabistro. Now her cell phone never stops ringing.

While Allison and I had coffee on Monday morning, Glenn Beck's staff was calling to schedule an appearance to discuss Britney Spears' ever-complicated life.

Allison's goal is make it in New York. How many 25-year-olds you know have two agents at the William Morris Agency? She even boasted that a production company may feature her in a reality show.

For the moment, she can live with the online attention. "[Gawker's] mean-spirited criticism of me has turned into a roast," she said. "I roll with it."

MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE DAY: What's your favorite thing about Gawker.com?

PET PEEVE: The Washington press corps was rather meek at assessing Karl Rove's career when the senior adviser to President Bush resigned the other day. Yes, the leads should've been that Rove had an uncanny ability to help politicians win elections. His questionable divide-and-conquer tactics could've appeared higher in the stories, too.

READERS RESPOND: "The [New York] Times is finally getting what it deserves: competition. ... People are leaving in droves to get their news elsewhere, maybe where it is less biased and more fair and balanced." John Koza

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This article was updated to correct the spelling of Joshua David Stein's name.

By Jon Friedman