Nick Denton

Nick Denton, born August 24, 1966,^[1] is a British journalist and internet entrepreneur, the founder and proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and the managing editor of the New York-based Gawker.com. For years after starting Gawker Media, the online publishing network, in 2002, Nick Denton ran the company out of his apartment, in SoHo.

It is believed that Denton grew up in Hampstead, and was educated at University College School and University College, Oxford where he studied Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. He also became the editor of the university magazine, Isis. He began his career as a journalist with the Financial Times. He co-wrote a book about the collapse of Barings Bank called All That Glitters. He was one of the founders of a social networking site called First Tuesday^[2] and co-founded Moreover Technologies^[3] with David Galbraith and Angus Bankes, schoolmates from UCS. Denton owns nine websites, the most popular being Gizmodo - a lifestyle website about that centers around gadgets and consumer electronics. Gizmodo pulls in nearly six million visitors a month.

Denton was featured in the Sunday Times Rich List 2007 in position 502 with an estimated wealth of £140m (approximately $290m) based on the sale of his previous companies and the current value of Gawker Media. He was once featured in a Vanity Fair photoshoot and was the subject of a feature article in The New Yorker.^[4] Denton lives in New York City in a SoHo apartment on the same floor as actor Samuel L. Jackson.^[5]

Controversies

• In 2007, Denton's Valleywag editor, Owen Thomas, outed Silicon Valley businessman, Peter Thiel in a post entitled, "Peter Thiel is totally homo, people."^[6] In the comment section of Thomas's post, Denton speculated as to why Thiel would keep "his personal life a secret from journalists... for so long." He even named "a guy called Mike" as an alleged boyfriend.^[7] In response, Thiel called Valleywag the "Silicon Valley Equivalent of Al Qaeda".^[8] Thiel called out the sites for "scar[ing] everybody" and for stifling the culture of Silicon Valley, which is "supposed to be about people who are willing to think out loud and be different."

• On October 28, 2010, he published an anonymous kiss-and-tell piece entitled, "I Had a One-Night Stand with Christine O'Donnell," causing ire among left-leaning feminists. The sensational headline was also not true, even from the writer's stance, since according to the writer, O'Donnell only slept naked with the anonymous writer and did not have sex with him.^[9] The National Organization for Women condemned the piece as "slut-shaming." NOW's president, Terry O'Neill, stated, "It operates as public sexual harassment. And like all sexual harassment, it targets not only O'Donnell, but all women contemplating stepping into the public sphere."^[10] Salon's Justin Elliott criticized the ad hominem nature of the article, Tweeting, "Today, we are all Christine O'Donnell.^[11]" Gawker.com reportedly paid in the "low four figures" for the story.^[12] Denton defended it, praising its "brilliant packaging." ^[13]

References

1. ^ Sorkin, Andrew (November 2003). "New York Times". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/17/technology/17blog.html?ex=1384491600&en=d14f43fbe25dcfd4&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND. Retrieved 2007-08-24. 
2. ^ "FirstTuesday.com". http://www.firsttuesday.com. 
3. ^ "Moreover.com". http://www.moreover.com/. 
4. ^ McGrath, Ben (2010-10-18). "Nick Denton, Gawker Media, and journalism's future". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_mcgrath?currentPage=all. Retrieved 2010-10-12. 
5. ^ "Nosy neighbor". New York Post. November 22, 2009. http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/nosy_neighbor_R6TAa34iV5aSoogKYgCIVK#ixzz0XbnLQpKr. 
6. ^ http://valleywag.gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people
7. ^ http://valleywag.gawker.com/comment/3414140/
8. ^ http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-says-valleywag-is-silicon-valley-equivalent-of-al-qaeda-2009-5
9. ^ http://gawker.com/5674353/i-had-a-one+night-stand-with-christine-odonnell?skyline=true&s=i
10. ^ http://www.now.org/press/10-10/10-28.html
11. ^ http://twitter.com/elliottjustin/status/29014215829
12. ^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101028/bs_yblog_upshot/gawker-editor-defends-anonymous-odonnell-post
13. ^ http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/gawker-honcho-writers-are-successful-to-the-extent-that-they-can-sublimate-their-egotism

External links

• Nick Denton official website
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Collected news and commentary at The New York Observer
• Jack Shafer, Nick Denton, Publicity Cat, Slate, July 11, 2006
• Vanessa Grigoriadis, "Everybody Sucks: Gawker and the rage of the creative underclass, New York, October 22, 2007
• Ben McGrath, Search and Destroy, The New Yorker, October 18, 2010