NICK DENTON — I am, says Jacob Weisberg, doing a "Cheney" — heading the search committee for a new managing editor of Gawker, and choosing myself. Thanks for that. Yes, Brian Stelter had the story right. The site won't change much: it will remain focused on media gossip and pop culture; Alex Pareene will blog the breaking news; Maggie Shnayerson will continue to embarrass the magazine industry and permalancer-abusing media conglomerates such as Viacom; and Sheila McClear will cover book publishing. We'll be adding some new contributors over the next few weeks. To begin: Richard Morgan, who'll focus on the TV networks; Nick Douglas, a Gawker Media veteran, as our early warning antenna for Youtube clips and other pop culture phenomena on the web; Richard Lawson, better known as the commenter lolcait, will be running the site's new photo caption contest. Oh, and there's a surprise guest, this afternoon at 2pm, in the comments. After the jump, other new year changes at Gawker's sibling titles, if you're interested.

It's Gawker Media's anal side: we like to make changes in a neat package. As well as my own promotion, there are new managing editors at two other titles; and there's a new site launching today. At Wonkette, the political gossip site, by popular demand, the legendary Ken Layne is back, this time as managing editor. And, at Defamer, Gawker's entertainment gossip title, Mark Graham is coming in as managing editor.

Mark Lisanti, the site's founding editor and one of the best writers on the web, will remain. But Defamer's expanding, into celebrity photos and video clips, and original reporting. So we're hiring the site's first managing editor. Mark Graham, who'll take over the administration of the operation, was a manager at Viacom. More importantly, he's an old-school blogger, creator of Whatevs, one of the first pop culture blogs.

And the one last bullet point to this company press release: Annalee Newitz, a contributor to Wired among many other publications, is helming Gawker's new science fiction and futurist culture site, io9, which launches today.