I can't stop reading this analysis of Gawker's editorial strategy
In January, newly minted Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio announced an experiment: Each day for two weeks, a single staff writer would be assigned “traffic-whoring duty.” [Language alert.]
Context & Ripple Effects
The experiment A.J. Daulerio announced in January is the latest turn in a long Gawker arc: Nick Denton first tied blogger pay directly to traffic back in 2008, brought back pageview bonuses alongside "checkbook journalism" in 2009, and by 2010 was telling staff to be "even more of a hustler" as the network shifted its metric to uniques. Each step made traffic-chasing more explicit inside the newsroom.
What makes this round notable is timing and reception: the February 2011 redesign left Gawker's traffic worse than anyone anticipated, so a new editor openly assigning a writer per day to "traffic-whoring duty" reads as doubling down on volume after the redesign disappointed. That the piece was picked up the same week by both Poynter and the Online Journalism Blog shows how closely the journalism press watches Gawker as a test case for metrics-driven editing.
First-order effects
- A rotating daily traffic assignment makes audience-chasing an explicit part of the Gawker staff job description rather than an informal incentive, under an editor installed to reverse the post-redesign slump.
Second-order effects
- Other web-native outlets watching the two-week results face pressure to either formalize similar traffic roles or differentiate on editorial quality, since Gawker keeps turning its internal metrics experiments into public spectacle.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the industry drifts from traffic-linked bonuses toward traffic-assigned labor itself — editorial roles defined by which metric they serve, with journalism-trade outlets like Nieman Lab acting as the scoreboard.
The trend: Web-native newsrooms are moving from paying for traffic to formally assigning it, making audience metrics an explicit editorial job function rather than a bonus variable.