For the past few months, any and everyone who acknowledges that #GamerGate is the name of a scandal that spawned a consumer revolt against corrupt media is probably a little glad, a little confused and very alerted to the fact that Nick Denton, the C.E.O., of Gawker Media, is stepping down as the president, only to have a board of managers step in to take his place.

The news follows close on the heels of a previous report by Capital New York, which acknowledged that former editorial director, Joel Johnson, the guy probably best known for posting a memo about writers at Gawker needing to be careful for saying things like “bring back bullying” – comments from the once vocal and socially cantankerous Sam Biddle – has decided to part ways from Gawker altogether.

A follow-up article from Capital New York rolls out Nick Denton’s new shake-up to have a new group of managers to oversee some of the day-to-day operations of the Gawker platform and its accompanying content subsidiaries.

According to Denton, in a lengthy but somewhat entertaining memo…



“I have some important news.” Usually, that’s how I start a conversation with someone who is being promoted, or fired. This time, that conversation is about me: my solo leadership of this company, and the collective management that is going to replace it.



“Here are the highlights: I am announcing the formation of a managing partnership of seven people which will make key decisions together.”



The first thing that floods my thoughts are: did this have anything to do with the recent crackdown by the FTC on promotional affiliate disclosure and the constant barrage of lawsuits from one group or another? Well, none of that is addressed in Denton’s wordy and very personal memo.

However, one thing is made blatantly clear in the missive: #GamerGate has encapsulated the attention of the C.E.O., of Gawker Media.

Denton drops the controversial subject matter somewhere in what you might consider to be the middle of the memo, stating…



“What Tommy [Craggs] did was simply to set me thinking, through something he said during a conversation just as Gamergate was subsiding. “I just want to break a fucking story.” Or maybe it was “I just want to fucking break a story.” One of the two.

“ Then I went off the rails, as I do, and asked myself: damn, is Gamergate really our story of the year? You are only as good as your last story, that’s what they would say on Fleet Street.”



I’ll say this: if a major content producer’s biggest story of the year is that one of their writers made petulant comments that resulted in a bunch of advertisers pulling money out of the company then that’s the most embarrassing “story of the year” material ever. Heck, any sane business owner would want a story centered around the tawdry comments of a writer dead and buried somewhere in a Nevada desert.

One of the best rules of the business is to tell stories, not become one.

Once you cross the line from one to the other, you enter the ranks of being a 15-minute scandal that does nothing but tar the name of the company and everyone involved… just like every single pathetic self-proclaimed video game journalist who had a dealing in the “Gamers are Dead” barrage just draped themselves in a toxic garment called “the internet never forgets.”

With some major shakeups happening at Gawker, behind-the-scenes and with the pelting barrage of e-mails stripping them of their advertisers, I’m most interested to see what becomes of the media giant throughout 2015.