Nick Denton's Quotes

I think straight couples have a schedule: You're together for two years and then there's the 'where is this going?' question, which wouldn't necessarily be good for everyone, but I think it's pretty healthy for relationships, for there to be a presumption that there is a decision to be made.

I've never really understood people who climb socially by sucking up. It seems like the least efficient way to climb, and also the most psychologically debilitating.

It irritates me that everybody concentrates on Gawker, because it's just one of 15 sites and it doesn't even get the most traffic. It's a significant site, but it's not what we are.

It's no wonder that new ventures such as The Daily look first to Gawker Media when staffing up. We should not wait for a poaching expedition to pay someone what they deserve. I apologize if that has been the case and will do better in 2012.

My background is economics and maths. I think one of the reasons I studied humanities at all, or even went into journalism, is because, like, science and maths wasn't cool in England when I was growing up. No one ever talked to the engineering students at Oxford.

The idea of harnessing the intelligence of the readership has been lost in the quest for Facebook likes. For many, readers have become synonymous with hateful commenters. It's time for a renewed push to realize some of the original dreams of the web.

The original idea of blog publishing was that writer and reader would be on the same level. That it would be a conversation - not a lecture. People lost sight of that. We didn't. Kinja is designed to break down the walls of the ghettos. So that everybody - editor, writer, source, subject, expert, fan - can be a contributor.

There was a rivalry - and some pie-throwing. But that was probably because Gawker and Radar had more in common than they wanted to admit. Each was the other's future. Radar served up the exclusives I always envied. Gawker was actually comfortable on the web, in the medium Radar should have made its own.

Three-quarters of our sites - Kotaku, Gawker, Jezebel, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Lifehacker - are led by editors who built their careers within Gawker Media. That's the career path.

You could argue that as web audiences have grown larger and advertisers have demanded scale, the web has dumbed down - like the mainstream media we so mocked.

You know how the best story angles often spring from that thought you have on reading an article or watching a show - that thought you have before the responsible journalist in you comes up with something boring. I usually recommend people get in touch with their deep 'reptilian brain.'

An employer would be a complete fool to let an image like college partying influence their hiring decisions.

Apple makes beautiful products. I own a Mac Pro, a Mac Book, a Mac Mini, an iPad, an iPhone, pretty much the entire collection.

Ben Smith's quick-hit campaign 'scoops' are about as viral as cat videos. That fits with Buzzfeed.

Forget about someone's resume or how they present themselves at a party. Can they blog or not? The blog doesn't lie.

Google demotes search results that don't get clicked on.

I don't really mind playing tabloid monster. I always liked those characters in the old movies.

I want to institutionalise and automate chequebook journalism.

Is there Gawker ethics? I mean, I guess there's Gawker ethics. It's a dangerous thing to talk about.

Jonah Peretti is one of the smartest web publishers out there. And Buzzfeed is an aggressive and dynamic company.

Most good media come out of somebody saying, 'This should exist; this is something I want to read.'

Personally, as a print journalist, I always found the most interesting stories to be the ones hacks talked about in the bar after work.

Relentless and cynical traffic-trawling is bad for the soul.

Superior writers, videographers and other content makers want to work with their own kind and for their own kind.

That's always been my test for what makes a story: is this something journalists would gossip with each other about?

The most interesting comments, they don't come from people with Klout scores. They don't come from people with a history on our sites.