IGNITION: The Future Of Media is under way at the Time Warner Center in New York. We begin with a one-on-one with Henry Blodget and Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton.
Live blog starts here:
1:30 - ND: We’re sensationalists... The whole "we’re through with blogs" is a bit of an attention grabbing device...
1:32 - ND: Gawker's site looks a little like an early 20th century newspaper...
1:35 - ND: Web Media went down a dead end ... We’re going to pay less attention to commenters, who keep us in a ghetto...
1:43 - ND: Most big organizations are too sluggish to copy us quickly enough ... Business Insider is pretty fast about it.
1:44 - ND: Largely because we've pushed scoops and exclusives, we've gotten to 2 million uniques. We can capture this by shocking stories. The price you pay is people know you by those stories. Our sites have a much wider array of material that gets lost in that material.
1:48 - HB: One of the gutter reputation sources is that you pay for information.
ND: I love paying for information. It's a great investment. We paid $12,000 for the Favre story, and it put Deadspin on the map. Also I love that it gets the traditional media contorted. It's a beautiful thing to watch.
1:52 - HB: The other piece that horrifies people is that you pay writers for performance...
ND: I think people have come around to that a little bit... It also benefits the quality pieces.
1:55 - ND: [The future of internet reporting] is that there will be great journalism, great gadget and tech coverage, great entertainment coverage ... there may not be great foreign affairs and corruption coverage.
1:56 - HB: Are you happy Murdoch is putting up paywalls?
ND: I'm not going to do that. Our place is to be naughty, controversial, free, available through FaceBook ... Some organizations have legacy costs and they will need to go in a subscription direction.
