One year ago, Congress defunded public media. Now that we're 100% community funded, please become a sustaining member or increase your existing membership today.
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
The Death and Life of Defamer
Say goodbye to Hollywood, baby. Defamer, the loved--but not loved enough--celebrity gossip blog has been folded into its parent blog, Gawker.
News broke yesterday, on a day when Hollywood had a little gold-dipped fella named Oscar on their minds, which Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke didn't see as a coincidence at all. Finke explains she'd "been hearing for awhile that the Gawker empire founder and chief exec [Nick Denton] was trying to sell Defamer, which accounts for only 2% of total traffic of his network of Internet websites and had been flat for the past year. Then Denton announced Defamer was officially on the block. He had one taker but the offer wasn't good enough."
So this morning, anyone looking for plain old defamer.com is being redirected to defamer.gawker.com, and can see that Gawker is calling Defamer their "Column From Hollywood." Denton rationalizes that this move will help take Gawker to a new level as a national gossip site (it was born as a Manhattan media and insider's gossip blog), but many believe that Defamer was moving towards its demise when its clever founder, Mark Lisanti, gave up the reins a year ago. (LAist interviewed the then 30-year-old who'd just emerged from anonymity back in 2005.)
Who's running the show now? Finke says "top Defamer editor Seth Abramovitch was offered a position with the merged Gawker/Defamer, but declined. The other Defamer writers, Stu VanAirsdale and Kyle Buchanan, were fired." She says the three men may be looking to work together on a new gossip endeavor, and in the meanwhile "Gawker's Richard Lawson will be assigned to the Defamer beat. And Gawker/Defamer is hiring a Hollywood gossip writer." Anyone interested?
One year ago, Congress voted to defund public media, eliminating a critical $1.7 million from our budget every year going forward. But they couldn’t silence us, and we’re not going anywhere. LAist is now 100% community funded and that means we’re taking our future into our own hands and turning to you to keep local reporting strong.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
Senior Vice President News, Editor in Chief
