‘News is being carried by entertainment’: Nick Denton on the state of media
In a nearly full Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday, Nick Denton, the man who oversaw the rise and fall of Gawker held forth on what went wrong and why digital news publications are in a tough predicament.
Denton held forth in a conversation with Fusion senior editor Felix Salmon at the closing panel at Transition, a two-day event put on by marketing platform Percolate.
Below are some choice excerpts from the conversation. In a few instances, these have been lightly edited.
On what went wrong for Gawker at the Hulk Hogan trial
“The jury liked him, and didn’t like a bunch of Fifth Avenue deviants. It was a popularity contest, and we lost, conclusively.”
On innovation in media
“There’s been a lot of innovation in the distribution of content, in making sure the right person sees the right content at the right time. If you look at the content creation level, there really hasn’t been that much innovation at all.”
On the rise of autoplay video
“We have yet to see if it actually makes money for anybody. And we’ve yet to see if the user experience is significantly improved over simply scrolling text.”
On the value independent digital media companies place in news
“The news is being carried by the entertainment. As long as things are good, the news will be fine. [But] news will be one of the first places to feel the cuts.”
On how the internet is perceived
“I love Twitter. You have very important conversations, it’s forced social change, political change. I’m not a Twitter basher, but the trolls on Twitter have given the rest of the internet a bad name. The writing is more defensive. People are expecting that toxic reaction. What would have been seen as standard journalistic criticism can now quite easily be dubbed bullying. The attitudes have changed.”
On Denton’s future
“A lot of lawsuits. I’ve been trying to find a better phrase than professional litigant to describe my upcoming year.”
On the Internet being terrible
“How much worse could it get?”
More in Media
Media Briefing: Publishers who bet on events and franchises this year are reaping the rewards
Tentpole events and franchises are helping publishers lock in advertising revenue.
With Firefly Image 3, Adobe aims to integrate more AI tools for various apps
New tools let people make images in seconds, create image backgrounds, replacing parts of an image and use reference images to create with AI.
Publishers revamp their newsletter offerings to engage audiences amid threat of AI and declining referral traffic
Publishers like Axios, Eater, the Guardian, theSkimm and Snopes are either growing or revamping their newsletter offerings to engage audiences as a wave of generative AI advancements increases the need for original content and referral traffic declines push publishers to find alternative ways to reach readers.