According to the head of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, online media need to become more like television, states an article on paidcontent.org. "It means a screen which is less constrained by the need to have three or four ads and every single bit of content on one screen," Denton was quoted as saying in the article. PaidContent speculated whether Denton was making reference to a future Gawker redesign.

There will always be space for writers, however, even if just to put text around a video. He expressed frustration with blogs, noting that for the Gizmodo iPhone 4 story, "we had to cease publishing for six hours to keep this story at the top of the page."

Gawker's goal is to focus more on new media and less on old media. "I always say that our readers are interested in [Mark] Zuckerberg, not [Mort] Zuckerman," the article quotes Denton.

Interestingly, Denton was dismissive Twitter as a good place for news because audience is "closed, elite and not mainstream enough." He argued Facebook is better because it can "send a post's traffic up five-fold" and that stories are more personal and the reading experience more "intimate."

His statements were at odds with a recent article in The Guardian which focused on the strengths of Twitter that no other new media source can currently provide. Despite the fact that Twitter only has 145 million users while Facebook is the leader of social networks with over 500 million users, the Guardian article argued that Twitter is ultimately more useful for the media. "For people in the media business, [Twitter] has rapidly - in less than four years - become their peripheral nervous system," said journalist Charles Arthur. "It tells you what's going on around the world, or within your sphere of interest; it helps for bouncing ideas around, for staying abreast of what you have to know."

Sources: paidcontent.org, The Guardian
Image: paidcontent.org