Taking a break from the thousands of pages of documents related to the 2008 bank bailout that the Fed released yesterday—more on them later—I indulge my reprehensible weakness for media gossip, perusing a six-thousand-word post by Felix Salmon, the financial blogger, about Gawker Media. In addition to being an excellent advertisement for restricted word counts—and Salmon’s Stakhanovite work ethic—the post contains quite a bit of stuff that was news to me. (And, no, I don’t mean all that guff about Gawker redesigning its home page to feature one lead story. Stop the presses: Nick Denton, a former newspaper man, discovers the front-page splash.)

Here’s the real skinny:

Gawker’s top advertising executive, Chris Batty, the person primarily responsible for bringing in the green that pays the rest of the staff’s wages, has quit or been pushed out, and he’s taking with him the firm’s top salesman. Actually, the media-savvy Denton put this bad news out himself, in a long e-mail to staff that was leaked earlier this week. But Salmon has lots of background to Batty’s departure, which he says is likely to hit Gawker’s revenues in the coming months. Seems Batty and Denton disagreed about the wisdom of junking the blog format that Gawker pioneered and trying to become an online cable network, which is what appears to be in Denton’s mind. Gawker is organized like an international money-laundering operation. Much of its international revenues are directed through Hungary, where Denton’s mother hails from, and where some of the firm’s techies are located. But that is only part of it. Recently, Salmon reports, the various Gawker operations—Gawker Media LLC, Gawker Entertainment LLC, Gawker Technology LLC, Gawker Sales LLC—have been restructured to bring them under control of a shell company based in the Cayman Islands, Gawker Media Group Inc.

Why would a relatively small media outfit based in Soho choose to incorporate itself in a Caribbean locale long favored by insider dealers, drug cartels, hedge funds, and other entities with lots of cash they don’t want to advertise? The question virtually answers itself, but for those unversed in the intricacies of international tax avoidance Salmon spells it out: “The result is a company where 130 U.S. employees eat up the lion’s share of the the U.S. revenues, resulting in little if any taxable income, while the international income, the franchise value of the brands, and the value of the technology all stays permanently overseas, untouched by the I.R.S.”