I'm no cheerleader for this here website—after all, I quit! Monday is my last day! Even so, I can't help but be irritated when Real Media Outlets write total lies about Gawker—because it's just bad journalism. Why, they're worse than bloggers!

  • Heather Havrilesky in Salon: "As Gawker matured, regular, everyday people were increasingly treated to the suspicions and scorn typically reserved for soft-pawed elites."
  • David Brooks in the New York Times: "The bloggers on staff are compelled to produce 12 blog posts a day, and under the old compensation system they were paid the munificent sum of $12 per post. Now it's worse. Owner Nick Denton is going to pay them per page-view. No views, no food."


Neither of these statements is true in the slightest! They are received bits of incorrect information from other people's accounts of reading this website by people who, bless them for it, clearly do not.

This strawman of "regular, everyday people" of the awesome Heather's is ludicrous—we only write about public figures. (Fun fact: In the fameball internet reality show age, more people than ever work to make themselves public figures!) Who's an everyday person? A chest-baring T.V. talking head and her millionaire boyfriend, who was the subject of a long New Yorker profile? A Pulitzer-prize winning author and his Ted Turner-loving wife? A man who set up a website that obsessively chronicles his every appearance as an extra in a Hollywood film? Bridezillas who crave wedding coverage in the New York Times? Anyone who puts more than five pictures of himself on Facebook? Anyone who's auditioned for a reality show? Anyone with a blog?

As for David Brooks, there are at least three errors in those four sentences, two of them of omission or lack of qualification. It's definitely not my place to get into the Byzantries [NOT A WORD! But you know what I mean, no? Paging Grant Barrett!] of our pay system. Let's just say this place pays better for young word-folks than the publication for which he phones in columns and leave it at that.