Well, at least one mogul is still bearish on the economy: In a move that has now seemingly been linked to by every corner of the web, Gawker Media Emperor Nick Denton today announced that the company will be spinning off three of its websites: Idolator, Gridskipper, and Wonkette. Full e-mail follows.

I'm amazed we've managed to keep a lid on this news; that, given your
naturally gossipy natures, must be a first! We're spinning off three
sites: Idolator, Gridskipper and--this one may be a surprise--Wonkette.
There were indeed some rumors about Maura Johnston's music blog late
last year; they were true of course. For reasons that I'll explain
below, both it and our travel and politics sites have better
commercial futures outside Gawker than within. (Excuse the corporate
lingo: some of it is unavoidable.) But, first, the facts, which will
be hitting the wires later this morning, or as soon as you leak this
email. Go ahead!

* IDOLATOR is going to Buzznet, a music-focused web and social
network. Buzznet recently acquired Idolator's chief rival, Stereogum,
and received a big investment from Universal Music Group.
* GRIDSKIPPER isn't going far: it's being taken over by Curbed, the
network founded by Lockhart Steele, in which Gawker Media is a
shareholder.
* WONKETTE is being spun off to the managing editor, Ken Layne, former
founder of one of the web's very first news sites, Tabloid.net. The
title will become part of the Blogads network of political sites,
which includes Daily Kos, among others.

Why these three sites? To be blunt: they each had their editorial
successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the
advertising than we did.

Music audiences are fragmented across genres; Maura's Idolator gave
Stereogum a good run, but a group with a whole array of music sites
will command more attention from record labels than we could. In the
case of Gridskipper, our urban travel guide, we could never match
Curbed in attention to city-specific content and advertising. As for
Wonkette: political advertisers are a strange breed; they don't come
through the same agencies our sales people deal with.

I'm relieved we've found pretty decent homes for the three sites, and
most of their writers, but we're gutted to lose them. Idolator's Pop
Critic's Poll was a tremendous coup--and Patric's bleeding-heart logo
for the site was one of my favorites. Gridskipper is so far the most
sophisticated travel blog: it entirely deserved its inclusion in
Time's list of the 50 coolest websites.

And Wonkette is one of the brands with which the company is most
associated; people will be shocked that we would ever part with it.
The political site has won an array of Bloggies and other awards; it
introduced the word ass-fucking into the dictionary of political
abuse; the founding editor's slippers are even on display in the new
media museum in Washington, DC. And Ken and his team have brought a
new liveliness to the site this election season--validated by the
record traffic of the last three months.

So why not wait, at least till the election? Well, since the end of
last year, we've been expecting a downturn. Scratch that: since the
middle of 2006, when we sold off Screenhead, shuttered Sploid and
declared we were "hunkering down", we've been waiting for the internet
bubble to burst. No, really, this time. And, even if not, better safe
than sorry; and better too early than too late.

Everybody says that the internet is special; that advertising is still
moving away from print and TV; and Gawker sites are still growing in
traffic by about 90% a year, way faster than the web as a whole. But
it would be naive to think that we can merely power through an
advertising recession. We need to concentrate our energies, and the
time of Chris Batty's sales group, on the sites with the greatest
potential for audience and advertising.

The dozen sites that remain represent some 97% or our 228m pageviews
per month, and an even higher proportion of our growth and advertising
revenue. (Key facts are below, in case anyone asks.) We'll be able to
devote more attention to breakouts such as Jezebel and io9, as well as
established titles such as Gizmodo and Kotaku, which are becoming
utterly dominant in their domains. And, then, once this recession is
done with, and we come up from the bunker to survey the internet
wasteland around us, we can decide on what new territories we want to
colonize.

Both Noah and I are around to answer any questions. On email, IM, or
phone. I'm [xxx] and Noah is on [xxx].

Regards

Nick