I’m a big fan of several of the Gawker media blogs. Mostly I read Gizmodo, Consumerist, and Idolator, but for a while there I was hooked on their flagship title, Gawker. They might not be the most reputable folks out there, but I love that they report on very escoteric New York items that most people outside the city (and despite what you may think, there are actually a lot of us) would never see. Even if I don’t know who the involved parties are most of the time, the write-ups are worthwhile by virtue of seeing into a world that I never would’ve seen otherwise. Plus they’re snarky, and I love that.
I was making the rounds today, and saw this Larry King Live segment, and rebuttal. The woman on it, Gawker editor Emily Gould, put up a really good defense on the site of why Gawker does what it does. During the actual interview, she did a good job keeping calm and not playing into the screaming lunatic role that Kimmel was obviously trying to goad her into. Watch the video - he’s pulling a perfect Bill O’Reilly. Cutting her off, telling her she’s going to Hell, and generally being offensive on every level. Gould seems pretty laid back about the whole thing, and honestly a little amused by his (and his lawyer’s, and his PR flack’s - both also on the show) vehemence. Though she kept blinking and looking around - it kind of looked to me that she’s not used to being on live TV.
For a guy who has a career based on acting like a vulgar low-rent parody of The Common Man, who obviously thrives on being in the public eye, you’d think he’d understand the point of Galker Stalker. I thought it was particularly important when Emily pointed out (on the site, not video) that they get a lot of Stalker tips from celebrity PR agents.
Obviously the problem isn’t that someone knows that Jimmy Kimmel was seen (allegedly?) drunk in public, or that Kevin Costner is (allegedly?) getting fat, but rather that they (and their agents) don’t have total control over their image, and they can’t stop something less than flattering from getting out by threatening to withhold future stories if the current ones aren’t cleaned up. That’s what I love about blogging. Gawker really doesn’t have anything to lose by pissing off their subjects, the way traditional media does.
Kotaku, Gawker’s gaming blog, was told by Sony not to publish a rumor, on pain of losing their test unit PS3, and not getting any more exclusives. This wasn’t an internal memo leak or something they got under an NDA. This was a rumor - incidentally it was true, and concerned PlayStation Home or whatever it’s called - that they went to Sony to confirm, and Sony’s response was neither to confirm nr deny, but to threaten. To Kotaku’s credit, they ran it anyway. Sony threw a fit, but they backed down. Corporations need bloggers more that vice versa, and they’re starting to figure that out. The Sword of Damocles is getting duller by the day.
The revelation of Gawker Stalker, or Kotaku running that story, or any of a million other examples, is that media companies, celebrities, etc, are in strange territory with the Internet, because bloggers haven’t, and never will, conglomerate the way “old media” (TV, Radio, Newspapers) did. Conde Nast can buy Reddit and then have Wired run hit pieces on Digg, but they can’t stop anyone else from running with the story. What are they going to do, pull the ads they already don’t run? Revoke the access they already aren’t granting?
Say what you want about bloggers - and Jimmy Kimmel might have a point about the lack of accountability and fact-checking - but they have a freedom that the rest of the press just doesn’t, or better or for worse. I can publish in WordPress to a worldwide audience for free inside of five minutes, versus spending years and millions of dollars to get a newspaper to a single metropolitan area, and that low barrier to entry means that I can do whatever the hell I want.
So go ahead and bitch, Jimmy Kimmel, about free publicity, just because it’s not the same whitewashed, self-serving, obedient free publicity you’re used to.
On a side note, I think George Clooney had a much better plan to deal with Gawker Stalker: Just flood the thing with inaccurate or retarded date. Make it annoying to run and useless to read, and it’ll go away on it’s own. Not that I agree with Clooney’s position, but at least he’s not a complete idiot about how to deal with the issue.
