futurejournalismproject:

A fascinating look at Gawker’s newsroom by Nieman Lab’s Andrew Phelps.

In particular, the results of an experiment in which each staff writer spends one day a week on “traffic-whoring duty” while the rest pursue in-depth articles.

Gawker editor AJ Daulerio explained the experiment back in January:

This week, the writers of this site have all agreed to participate in an obnoxious, but worthwhile exercise. Each day, a different staff writer will be forced to break their usual routine and offer up posts they feel would garner the most traffic. While that writer struggles to find dancing cat videos and Burger King bathroom fights or any other post they feel will add those precious, precious new eyeballs, the rest of the staff will spend time on more substantive stories they may have neglected due to the rigors of scouring the internet each day to hit some imaginary quota. The writers not relegated to traffic-whoring duty will still post, just less frequently than many of them are probably used to.

Andrew Phelps, Nieman Lab. I can’t stop reading this analysis of Gawker’s editorial strategy.

Most newsrooms will probably do this in five years, but they’ll give it a slightly less edgy name.