According to Adweek, after a now-infamous (and now-nonexistant) article about the sex life of Condé Nast’s CFO led to a cataclysmic week for Gawker’s infrastructure (long half-apologies from Nick Denton! the resignation of Max Read and Tommy Craggs! labyrinthine posts about said resignations! revisitations of ongoing drama in the comment thread! etc!), Gawker will undergo a “relaunch” on Monday. (They’ll also physically be moving their offices).
The word “relaunch” is one of those highly vague terms thrown around in new media which could mean a series of things, but also, at a time like this, sounds euphemistic in the same way that the word “reprogramming” in sci-fi movies is tinged with connotations of euthanasia. To this extent, it seems the company may potentially be doing away with their name. Gawker founder Nick Denton told DigiDay:
We have an awesome portfolio… We produce a lot of drama. And sometimes, we become the story. We don’t want Gawker.com to be limited by the needs of the company. And there is a strong argument for a company name that is not the same as Gawker.com.
Outside of that, little is known about what this particular relaunch entails, but Nick Denton said during a meeting at a bar in Williamsburg that he wants the new site to be “10 to 15 percent” nicer (downgraded from an initial statement in which he’d said 20 percent), and that if members of the editorial team didn’t like it they can leave and receive full severance pay.
He also mentioned that his ideal editor for the new site would be Between the World and Me author and national correspondent for The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates’ response: