Eeesh. I just got home about an hour ago to the news about Gawker's Moe. Rough stuff - we differed on some things, but being unemployed is a hard thing for anyone. Fortunately, I think she's talented enough to land on her feet. My thought was always that a really great editor would bring out the best in her and that she wasn't necessarily being edited enough here. Hopefully the next engagement will allow that to take place.
What prompted this, though? Did Gawker overpay in the Radar-Jezebel-Gawker derby? Did management feel that the Panic of '08 story was mismanaged? Complaining advertisers? Cultural issues? I don't think her employment status was driven by "economic weakness." Her firing sticks out as set apart from the interesting - and scary - argument Mr. Denton made about advertising revenues.
He is changing the nature of his investment in internet content-driven advertising. Say what you want about the man, but he knows what he's doing with this stuff - one need only look to the wise sale earlier in the year of 3 properties. One point where we disagree is that I think this represents an inflection point for the theorized golden era of advertising-supported internet content. Ad spending implies demand for consumer products and services; when the economy retracts, ads retract. I suspect the payrolls of blogs and the bankrolls of bloggers will experience a similar phenomenon - to say nothing of the impact on Google and Yahoo.
My thought? Yahoo! doesn't survive 2009. Google's stock price cycles down to a much lower P/E. And ad-supported "free" distribution models die with the credit bubble.
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