Yahoo Inc has unveiled a deal to distribute media, gadgets, and political gossip blogs from Gawker Media. Yahoo will post "dozens" of stories per day from blogs including New York-media gossip blog Gawker, US political gossip-focused Wonkette, Hollywood insider's guide Defamer and popular technology blog Gizmodo.
"Launching on Yahoo News with stories from five of Gawker Media's most well-known websites, the relationship will soon expand to include content from other Gawker Media outlets which will be featured on additional Yahoo properties, such as Entertainment," Yahoo said in a statement on Wednesday.
The New York-based Gawker Media is an independent media company which publishes a stable of over a dozen weblogs on topics including media gossip (Gawker.com), politics (Wonkette.com), Hollywood (Defamer.com), and gadgets (Gizmodo.com). Gawker Media titles in aggregate draw more than 4.5 million unique visitors, and over 38 million pageviews, per month.
The deal, the financial terms of which have not been disclosed, comes on the heels of Yahoo's decision in October to begin displaying commentary from blogs alongside traditional news stories. Yahoo's decision to test the new news service search system had stoked debate between journalism traditionalists who want to maintain a strict wall between commentary and news and those who argue that these barriers are elitist.
"Our audience comes to Yahoo for the most compelling media experience on the Internet, and Gawker Media offers some of the most well-known and interesting commentary today," said Scott Moore, head of news and finance, Yahoo. "Gawker Media content expands Yahoo's non-traditional media library with unique perspectives that provide intelligent, funny and sometimes controversial views of the news events of the day."
"A group of edgy blog titles might not seem a particularly obvious fit with one of the big Internet companies, but Yahoo's developed a measure of geek chic, which makes them the right media partner for Gawker," said Nick Denton, publisher, Gawker Media.
Yahoo's addition of Gawker Media content follows several recent initiatives to offer non-traditional media to its audiences. Yahoo recently added grassroots media outlets (blogs and user-contributed photos) to Yahoo News Search. Earlier this year, the company also began offering content from the Huffington Post, a popular blog and news site operated by Arianna Huffington, on Yahoo News. Huffington's site drew over 700,000 unique visits during its first month of operation, but this figure was far lower than the million-plus visitors more established blogs like Daily Kos and Instapundit regularly rack up each month.
AdAge, which was involved in a spat with Gawker over the latter's hijacking of its online poll on blog-reading at work, wondered, "But is mainstream America � not to mention Yahoo's advertisers � ready for content 'so fixated on the hunting of the snark that they're prepared to flame everybody to a crisp?' as Jack Shafer wrote in Slate about two of Denton's blogs. Gawker slogs the New York news media scene, and Wonkette provides an irreverent, and often salacious slant, to Washington political news and scandal."
JupiterResearch analyst Gary Stein told Media Post that the deal could help Yahoo! more broadly establish itself as a media powerhouse. "They're going to get huge benefits from this traffic-wise," said Stein. He added that he is particularly impressed by Yahoo!'s amassing of unique editorial voices like the Huffington Post, and now Gawker. "Compared to the TV shows and stuff, which I don't think is all that exciting, these voices are really giving Yahoo! an edge over Google and AOL," he said.
Open Source Media (OSM), an online venture designed to bring together top online writers, journalists and commentators under a single umbrella, also officially debuted on Wednesday. Over 70 Web journalists, including Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds and David Corn, Washington editor of the Nation magazine, have agreed to participate in OSM.
