MetaFilter posts tagged with gawker

Dzhokhar does the robot

Rory Marinich — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:07:55 -0800

Up until last week, "One Direction Infection," a Tumblr blog created and maintained by an eighth grader we'll call Claire, looked like any other 14-year-old's Tumblr. But over the weekend Claire's subject matter took a sharp turn. In place of candid shots of Harry Styles and Zayn Malik, there are now photos of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; instead of inspirational image macros, there are annotated crime scene photos. Gawker's Max Read on where social media fandoms meet conspiracy theories.

"the current system is the most practical and 'seems to work'"

Rory Marinich — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 08:56:10 -0800

"Despite her pedigree, success came slowly," the story bravely ventured. This slowness was maybe not so apparent to several thousand other 24-year-olds who want to be actresses, but who haven't even figured out how to get to a reading for Law & Order to fail at it. Tom Scocca on Nathaniel Rich, Lena Dunham, Zosia Mamet, and cultural nepotism. (Related: How David Carr Became the Daddy of Girls)

"Now, watch this drive."

the man of twists and turns — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 05:38:38 -0800

Obama, DC Press Corps Locked In Mutual Loathing Pact. Mike Allen, of Politico, in his article Obama, The Puppet Master, said that Obama " has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions." John Cook (Gawker) replies: I will now tweet every question Politico's Mike Allen asked President George W. Bush during a May 2008 interview" (Screenshot) More ~~Tiger Beat On The Potomac~~ Politico: "This Isn't About A Golf Game". In Brief: Politico's Article on Obama's Media "Manipulation" Lacks a Mirror. Is Obama Being Too Mean To The White House Press Corps?

This weekend those tensions went public when the press corps learned of the president’s golf outing with Tiger Woods through a tweet by a Golf Digest writer who had access to the clubhouse at the Florida course where the president was playing. The White House press office seems to have circumvented the “pool” system whereby members of the White House press corps travel with the president to events and is kept informed of his whereabouts. The head of the White House Correspondents Association, Ed Henry, told Politico Monday night: "This is a fight for more access, period.... I've heard all kinds of critics saying the White House press corps is whining about a golf game and violating the president's privacy. Nothing could be further from the truth." "We're not interested in violating the president's privacy. He's entitled to vacations like everyone else. All we're asking for is a brief exception, quick access, a quick photo-op on the 18th green," Henry continued. "It's not about golf — it's about transparency and access in a broader sense."

Play Of The Day - Golf And Transparency. Stephen Colbert asks hard-hitting questions about transparency (and golf). Press Tries to Get Into Obama's Vacation Golf Club, But Is Denied. Obama Golfs With Tiger Woods, Shuts Out Press Corps. Obama on Woods: He's On Another Planet. Woods on Obama: "He hit the ball well and he's got a good touch".

It never occurs to us that she will listen.

Chanther — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 08:30:16 -0800

"Jenni Greenwald, please commit suicide." In 1986, John Cook and some fellow eighth grade boys wrote an underground newspaper filled with bullying and racism, targeting other students and teachers in their school. He reflects on this, getting in touch with both his co-authors and victims, in Confessions of a Teenage Word Bully.

The Ultimate List of Gawker Media Longreads

reenum — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:39:25 -0800

The Ultimate List of Gawker Media Longreads for 2012

Not that kind of girl.

Obscure Reference — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 09:38:14 -0800

I'm already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you, Lena Dunham's $3.7 million dollar book proposal.

WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS?

Mezentian — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:53:06 -0800

For the past few years, Topless Robot has run a column called Fan Fiction Friday (NSFW text, criticising the worst of the worst in fan-fiction (probably NSFW), crack-fiction, vile fan-fic and bad grammar in a style similar to MST3K. Several weeks ago Topless Robot founder Rob Bricken made the leap to Gawker Media's science-fiction-and-science website io9, and announced to the surprise of many that FFF would continue. Two weeks in (NSFW) io9 editor Annalee Newitz announced that FFF would be cancelled claiming "it's not going to work on io9". FFF previously on the Blue.

anomie

telstar — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 02:51:40 -0800

[a few comments removed] please everyone, try to be civil!

TV show recaps, recappers, and TWoP

flex — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:52:24 -0800

Taking the seen-it route: Sara Morrison talks about the rise and influence of television show recapping; recapping's advantages for writers; and the origins and evolution of Television Without Pity (<--- time suck warning: TVTropes link!) Includes lots of links and a handy chart of recappers. *Gawker - Tune In, Recap, Drop Out: Why I’ll Never Recap a TV Show Again by Rich Juzwiak

No more thankless work that posits the writer as an entertainer while the readers demand accordingly. (The emails come regularly: "Where is it?!") No more being bound to the whims of a show that could at any moment take a turn for the shitty, and will, if nothing else, thwart my social life. I want to be a normal person who's watching TV, not some frantic note-taking instant replayer. No more regularly scheduled forced digestion in a period of time that gives my brain and writing cramps. It's fatigue, plain and simple, that comes from within but is informed from without. The limitless ubiquity of recaps makes writing them a challenge. Competition is stiff and deadlines are brutal, typically requiring just a few hours for turnaround to remain relevant.

*Storyboard: How Recappers Re-Invented TV Culture

“I hated tonight’s episode of Mad Men, but I’ll probably read something on the Internet tomorrow that will change my mind.” So IM’d my girlfriend, and she’s not alone. Over the last decade — but especially its latter half — entertainment sites hired scores of writers tasked with the seemingly enviable responsibility of watching TV and writing about it online. TV criticism at a micro, episodic level has exploded, with content ranging from utilitarian descriptions designed to fill in those who missed last night’s episode to fanciful diversions into absurd fan-fiction and searing cultural criticism. We call it “recapping,” and it’s one of the most culturally potent forms of art criticism of our time... ...even our “dumb” TV is getting better. As Stephen Johnson argued in Everything Bad Is Good For You, the least nuanced reality shows like The Bachelor serve up a more stimulating mental exercise than the lowbrow fare of the 1980s. With dozens of interpersonal relationships and imperceptible social cues, these brilliant shows about stupid people are more interesting than, say,The Love Boat, and are thus way more fun to talk about.

*HuffPo - To Recap or Not to Recap, That Is the Question

What's the point of all of this? Are we going to miss the show and then run to the web and read what I missed the night before? That's not the same as watching the show, people! The real reason these recaps exist all over the web is: These recaps drive a lot of traffic to these websites. Why? Because people love to complain and obsess over their favorite/least favorite shows. We, the people of the Internet, like to feel a connection with our stories. We like to talk about these shows with our friends and feel like we are part of a community.

*Macleans - Recapping Our Top Story *NY Observer - Rise of the Recappers: For a New Class of Struggling Writers, It’s Time To Watch TV *Slate (from 2002) - Confessions of a Spoiler Whore: The Pleasures of Participatory TV by Emily Nussbaum *a series by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic on BlogHer: part 1: Recapping for Television Without Pity Turned Me Into a Writer part 2: Television Without Pity Sucks Dot Com: What It's Like to Be Really, Really Hated Online part 3: 9 Years, 13 Shows: Why, Yes, I Invented the Word "Cheftestant" part 4: Star Trek Fans and Editors: What I Still Miss From Television Without Pity *Janelle Harris - So What Do You Do, Richard Lawson, Senior Writer for The Atlantic Wire? The best TV recapper in the biz discusses his process Some unusual methods of recapping: - Each episode of Buffy, recapped as a limerick (previously) - American Horror Story, recapped with stick figures - Glee & American Idol episodes recapped in song - Saturday Night Live sketches recapped predictively the night before SNL airs

I want my twine to say something about ME

backseatpilot — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 12:49:35 -0800

The Hater's Guide to the Williams Sonoma Catalog

Predditors

Greg Nog — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 05:38:10 -0800

A Reddit user began compiling information on members of the subreddit "creepshots", posting them on her tumblr. The tumblr is deleted, but Gawker's Adrian Chen allegedly threatens to publish information about violentacrez, moderator of r/creepshots and r/jailbait. Reddit's Politics subreddit disallows all Gawker links in response.

"No one wants to hear about how tough it is."

zarq — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 19:05:03 -0800

This summer, Gawker began soliciting and publishing a weekly series of first person essays submitted by their readers: "True Stories." They include ten stories (to date) from struggling, unemployed Americans: Hello from the Underclass. (Those who dislike Gawker's interface can find direct links to individual essays within.) Unemployment Stories * Original request for essays. 1. Hello from the Underclass 2. 'We Are the Unseen' 3. 'Absolute Hell' 4. Pride and Pain 5. ‘I Go to Bed Every Night Hoping I Won’t Wake Up’ 6. ‘If It Weren’t For My Children I Probably Would Have Killed Myself By Now’ 7. ‘When I look to My Future, I See a Wall’ 8. ‘They Use You Up and Then They Throw You Away’ 9. ‘I Went From Being a Thriving Human Being to a Bitter Recluse Who Rants on Facebook’ 10. ‘It Wouldn’t Matter if I Just Disappeared from the Face of the Earth’ Also see: A Discussion of How to Deal With Our ‘Unemployment Stories’ in the Future Other Essays * How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance * Audacity: Losing My Fear of Outside (This essay describes a sexual assault, and may be disturbing to some readers) * The Crossdressing Room * The Punks on G Street: Tracking Cuba’s Rebellious Youth 50 Years After the Revolution" * Don't Think of Elephants * Origins of a Murder * Kanye West Is Better at His Job Than I Am at Mine (But I’m Way Better at Being a Fake-Ass Feminist)

Another attempt at taming the comment cesspool

COD — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 08:33:20 -0800

In yet another attempt to bring order and usefulness to the comments section of a high traffic news site, Gawker has implemented a new comment system. They are borrowing the basic concept from Slashdot that most comments will never be seen, and thus the focus is to find the interesting conversations that do occur under the article, and promote them with no regard for chronological order . The system shows some promise, although it clearly has a ways to go as a recent article failed to highlight replies in the comments from the subject of the article. Also of note, the photo of Nick Denton used in the article is by MeFi's own mathowie.

GAWK TAWK

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:36:48 -0800

Gawker: We want to elevate the discourse about frogs who sit like humans . No matter how you personally feel about the sites, you've got to admit that the Gawker network is big. So far in April 2012, the eight sites have attracted 1 million comments on 7,500 posts from 130,000 active commenters. But with comments described by Gawker's editor A.J. Daulerio as 'a tar pit of hell', they've decided to try to reinvent their commenting system again, including a system to allow commenters to sign in with temporary, anonymous, throwaway 'Burner' accounts. It'll be interesting, at least for folks who are interested in this kind of stuff, to see how it goes. My guess is: not spectacularly well.

Gawker announces newest hire: a current FOX News employee

huckleberryhart — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:23:54 -0800

Gawker has posted i inaugural column of "The Fox Mole"—a long-standing, current employee of Fox News Channel "I work at Fox News Channel. The final straw for me came last year. Oddly, it wasn't anything on TV that turned me rogue, though plenty of things on our air had pushed me in that direction over the years. But what finally broke me was a story on The Fox Nation. If you're not a frequenter of Fox Nation (and if you're reading Gawker, it's a pretty safe bet you're not) I can describe it for you — it's like an unholy mashup of the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post and a Klan meeting. Word around the office is that the site was actually the brainchild of Bill O'Reilly's chief stalker (and Gawker pal) Jesse Watters."

Next to the red crabs, this site is how most people became aware of Christmas Island.

stannate — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:39:14 -0800

It's time for a trip down the memory hole of the Internet. Investigative journalism still lives online, as Gawker penetrates the mystery behind the man who was Goatse. (Surprisingly safe-for-work, though please heed the warnings in the actual article itself.)

The next night we ate whale

shakespeherian — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:50:24 -0800

Go to bed, Tao Lin. Cole Styker, author of Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4Chan's Army Conquered the Web interviews and considers Tao Lin and 'trollgaze'. Previously?

When there's no more room in Hell, the consoles will walk the Earth.

d1rge — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:30:33 -0800

The Best 26-Minute Argument that Game Consoles Are Dying* At GDC 2012 last week, Ben Cousins of ngmoco, tablet and cellphone game company, argued that game consoles are dying*. *for appropriate values of "dying".

Our readers respond below...

Artw — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:44:05 -0800

Have online comment sections become 'a joke'?

horse_ebooks' creator revealed

Pants! — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:44:24 -0800

the previously discussed horse_ebooks twitter spambot/oracle creator has been tracked down by gawker

Never talk to a Style reporter!

The Whelk — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:46:43 -0800

Gawker: How the NYT Style section trolls their readers.

Bullseye

The Whelk — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 12:31:30 -0800

A while back, Gawker broke the story of a former manager suing Target as part of a series about life at the notoriously anti-union store. Since then many more employees have come forward with stories about "The sketchiest place I've ever worked." (Target Previously)

High-speed Collaboration.

mean cheez — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:30:26 -0800

Long Shot Magazine is putting together another issue in 48 hours. After the composition and release of their first two issues, Long Shot—a collection of fiction, non-fiction, photography, poetry, and other art—is preparing for a third issue following a resolved conflict with NBC over their former name: 48 Hours. They've reached double their goal on Kickstarter, and work on the issue will begin Friday, July 29. The first official issue used the offices of GOOD magazine in San Francisco for headquarters, and work on the second will be led from Gawker offices in Manhattan. Long Shot has received coverage in The Village Voice and New York Times, among others. Official guidelines for submissions—along with the theme—will be announced on the 29th, and potential contributors can sign up to be notified here.

"With television you just sit, watch, listen. The thinking is done for you."

Rhaomi — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:44:07 -0800

Gawker's John Cook yesterday published an exclusive report on a trove of documents from the Nixon Presidential Library tracing the development of Fox News to a 1970 internal memo annotated by then-consultant Roger Ailes. Part of a 318-page cache of similar documents, the memo -- "A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News" -- called for the creation of a strongly pro-Nixon news outlet operated from the White House which would disseminate partisan news packages free of charge to local affiliates across the country. By coordinating release of these targeted reports with allied politicians and duping opponents into hostile interviews, Ailes hoped to bypass the "prejudices of network news" -- a desire which led him to advocate for some unexpected political policies at the time, from campaign finance reform to anti-poverty efforts. The report comes as Fox is waging an aggressive two-front PR war with perceived ideological enemies -- calling on viewers to file IRS complaints against Media Matters' tax-exempt status for their dogged fact-checking of the network, while on-air hosts launched a campaign to label Jon Stewart "racist" after he called out their record of falsehoods following a critical interview with Chris Wallace (previously).

A Manhattan Microstudio

JPowers — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 20:52:32 -0800

She adored New York City. She idolized it all out of proportion. Sure, she paid $700 for a 90-square-foot microstudio, but New York was her town, and it always would be (via).