Gawker Hires Los Angeles Times Editor

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defamer.jpgMore Gawker Media news coming across the wire, err, feed reader. Simon Owen’s Bloggsam has published an internal memo from Gabriel Snyder regarding Gawker hiring a new West Coast Editor. From the memo:

Ever since Defamer was merged into Gawker earlier this year, I’ve been looking for the right person to hire in L.A., so I’m pleased to announce someone who was worth the wait: Richard Rushfield is joining Gawker as its new West Coast Editor. From his Venice bungalow he’ll proudly fly the Defamer flag as well as pitch in with charting the general editorial direction of the site.

Richard Rushfield is slated to start at Gawker on August 31st. He was previously the Entertainment Editor at Los Angeles Times, which should fit the Defamer part of Gawker perfectly. The Defamer brand was merged into the main Gawker site in February this year, after failing to sell it. Read the full memo at Bloggasm.

Gawker Media Traffic Sees 17% Increase In First Five Months 2009

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One of the good things with having your stats open in public, like Gawker Media has (using Sitemeter by the way), is that you can get others reporting on how much you grow. Like Simon Owens, who blogs at Bloggasm, and has been analyzing the stats, finding that the Gawker Media network (BloodCopy not included, of course!) increased by 17% during the first five months of 2009.

For the first five months of ‘09 the blogs showed a combined 1.4 billion page views, compared to 1.19 billion in the last five months of ‘09 — a jump of over 200 million.

To conduct this survey I compiled page view data from Gawker Media’s Sitemeter stats from each of the blogs. The number of page views does not represent the number of unique visitors to a site, but rather the number of times a page was loaded.

More numbers and analysis by Owens in the Bloggasm post. I guess Gawker Media could just link it, sit back, and save the money on that marketing rep who usually does these things.

Full Time Twitterer

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It is not just by advertising that you can monetize your twittering, you could also get paid to write tweets for somebody else. I’m sure a lot of people are making a living doing this, at least part time, since social media is as hot as it is these days. If you doubt that, Simon Owens found at least one person who does twitter for a living, for a magazine called Sky Mall. The twitterer, whose identity is unknown, was mentioned in a New York Times piece on the mag, although I doubt it is a 40 hour workweek. If it is, what a hack…

Simon Owens profiles bloggers covering next week’s DNC in Denver

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Following up to yesterday’s post about Google sponsoring a large bloggers venue at both the DNC and RNC political conventions over the next few weeks, Simon Owens, writing at PBS’s Mediashift blog, profiles some of the bloggers that will be covering next week’s DNC convention in Denver, Colorado.

Here’s a look at blogger Tracy Viselli:

“I really want to focus on some of our local or state stories,” Viselli told me. “For instance, not only is Nevada a swing state, my county is considered the swing county in the state. Also, we have the possibility of electing our first all-female congressional delegation, which is really exciting.”

She explained that her “over-arching narrative” at the Big Tent will be written from the point of view of a female progressive blogger from a swing state, a fact that she believes gives her a unique perspective.

A great post that looks in-depth at the upcoming political conventions. We’ve come a long way from 12 bloggers at the 2004 DNC to a huge facility for bloggers in 2008. What impact might they have on the upcoming election?