 | |
Type of site | Current events, culture |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Dissolved | January 31, 2018 |
| Created by | Choire Sicha Alex Balk |
| Editor | Silvia Killingsworth |
| Key people | Michael Macher (publisher) |
| Revenue | Unknown |
| URL | theawl |
| Launched | April 20, 2009 |
| Current status | Inactive |
The Awl was a website about "news, ideas and obscure Internet minutiae of the day" [1] based in New York City. Its motto was "Be Less Stupid."
Founded in April 2009 by David Cho and former Gawker editors Choire Sicha and Alex Balk out of Sicha's East Village, Manhattan apartment, after they were laid off by the pop culture magazine Radar , [2] [3] the trio decided to launch their own blog, completely "out of pocket with a bare-bones site." The site's name was coined by contributor Tom Scocca, after the small pointed tool used for piercing holes. "He’d always wanted to have a newspaper named The Awl. So we semi bought it from him in a friendly arrangement." Sicha told Vanity Fair . [4]
The first posts on the site were an infographic by Emily Gould of Gawker's office seating chart, "a video of a Miss USA contestant responding to a gay marriage question from Perez Hilton, and an item linking to a Reuters article about physicist Stephen Hawking being taken to the hospital." [1] Initial expectations by media observers were for the site to be a carbon copy of Gawker, but, said Nieman Journalism Lab’s Justin Ellis, "instead it was something smaller and focused on the writing, where people can write about the stuff they’re passionate or super nerdy about.". [3]
In mid-January 2018, The Awl announced that it would end publication at the end of that month. [5] It printed a final obituary to itself on January 31, 2018. [6]
As of July 2015, The Awl Network employed 13 people, as well as many freelance contributors. [3] After editing The Awl for over almost two years, Matt Buchanan and John Herrman announced their departure from the site in February 2016. [7] In March 2016 it was announced that Silvia Killingsworth would take over the editing position. [8] The Awl was published by John Shankman from 2011 until May 2014, when Michael Macher became publisher. [9] In 2011, David Cho left The Awl to join ESPN-affiliated sports site Grantland . [10]
The Awl had four sister sites: Splitsider, a comedy website; The Hairpin , a site geared toward women; The Sweethome, a home-furnishings review site; and The Billfold, a blog with a focus on personal finances. [2] [4] [11] [12] Laura Olin edits The Awl's newsletter entitled Everything Changes. Buchanan and Herrman also launched a podcast for the site. [3] The site also launched an app on the Apple App Store called The Awl: Weekend Companion. [13] On March 22, 2018, New York Media, the publisher of the magazine New York , announced that it had acquired Splitsider and would be folding it into the operations of its Vulture website. [14] Brian Lam's tech review site The Wirecutter also originated with The Awl before merging with The Sweethome and being acquired by The New York Times . [15] [16] [17]
Wonkette is an American online magazine of topical and political gossip, established in 2004 by Gawker Media and founding editor Ana Marie Cox. The editor since 2012 is Rebecca Schoenkopf, formerly of OC Weekly. Wonkette covers U.S. politics in a satirical manner.
Gawker was an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers that was based in New York City and focused on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in 2002, Gawker was the flagship blog for Denton's Gawker Media. Gawker Media also managed other blogs such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku.
Nicholas Guido Anthony Denton is a British Internet entrepreneur, journalist, and blogger. He is the founder and former proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and was the managing editor of the New York City-based Gawker, until a lawsuit by Terry Bollea bankrupted the company.
Choire Sicha is an American writer and blogger. In June 2021, he became an editor-at-large at New York; he had been the editor of The New York Times Style section since September 2017. Previously, he served as Vox Media's director of partner platforms, co-editor at Gawker, and a co-founder of The Awl.
The Daily Beast is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. Founded in 2008, the website is owned by IAC Inc.
Gizmodo is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. Gizmodo also includes the sub-blogs io9 and Earther, which focus on pop-culture and environmentalism respectively. Since April 2019, Gizmodo is part of G/O Media, owned by private equity firm Great Hill Partners.
Brian Lam is an American writer, best known for his work with Gizmodo, a blog focusing on technology; and The Wirecutter, a recommendation website for gadgets.
OR Books is a New York City-based independent publishing house founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson in 2009. The company sells digital and print-on-demand books directly to the customer and focuses on creative promotion through traditional media and the Internet. On its site, OR Books states that it "embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business."
Maura K. Johnston is a writer, editor and music critic. A member of Boston College's journalism faculty, she has written for Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Pitchfork, The Awl, The New York Times, Spin and The Guardian. She is working on a critical biography of Madonna for the Harlequin Enterprises subsidiary Hanover Square Press.
The Classical was a sports website featuring long-form sports articles. Described as the sports equivalent of The Awl, the site was launched in December 2011 by several members of the basketball blog FreeDarko, including Bethlehem Shoals and Eric Freeman, and features other writers such as David Roth, Eric Nusbaum, Tom Scharpling, Tim Marchman and Lang Whitaker.
Ken Layne is an American writer, publisher and broadcaster best known for his political blogging in the early 2000s and his association with Gawker Media and Wonkette from 2006 to 2012. He is the proprietor of Desert Oracle, a self-published periodical and radio program exploring themes related to the Mojave Desert and the Southwestern United States. Layne has also written for outlets such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Awl and LA CityBeat.
Vox is an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media. The website was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, and is noted for its concept of explanatory journalism. Vox's media presence also includes a YouTube channel, several podcasts, and a show presented on Netflix. Vox has been described as left-leaning and progressive.
Elite Daily is an American online news platform founded by David Arabov, Jonathon Francis, and Gerard Adams. The site describes its target audience as millennials. In addition to general news and trending topics, the site offers feature stories and listicles covering politics, social justice, sex and dating, women's issues, and sports. Its slogan is "The Voice of Generation Y".
In journalism, a hot take is a "piece of deliberately provocative commentary that is based almost entirely on shallow moralizing" in response to a news story, "usually written on tight deadlines with little research or reporting, and even less thought".
Sam Faulkner Biddle is an American technology journalist. He is a reporter for The Intercept, and was formerly a senior writer at Gawker, the editor of the news website Valleywag, and a reporter at Gizmodo.
Jason Parham is an American writer and editor. He is senior writer at Wired and the founder and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Spook. He was previously an editor at Gawker and The Fader, and his work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Awl, The Atlantic, The Village Voice, and The New York Times Magazine.
Gizmodo Media Group was an online media company and blog network formerly operated by Univision Communications in its Fusion Media Group division. The company was created from assets acquired from Gawker Media during its bankruptcy in 2016. In April 2019, Gizmodo and The Onion were sold to private equity firm Great Hill Partners, which combined them into a new company named G/O Media.
Wirecutter is a product review website owned by The New York Times Company. It was founded by Brian Lam in 2011 and purchased by The New York Times Company in 2016 for about $30 million.
"Pivot to video" is a phrase referring to the trend, starting in 2015, of media publishing companies cutting staff resources for written content in favor of short-form video content. These moves were generally presented by publishers as a response to changes in social media traffic or to changes in the media consumption habits of younger audiences. According to commentators, however, it was in reality driven by advertising; only advertisers, not consumers, prefer video over text. Due to the numerous jobs lost as a result, the term eventually became a euphemism for layoffs, death, and termination.
Ryan Broderick is an American journalist. He worked for BuzzFeed from 2012 to 2020, where he was a senior journalist at the tech news desk until he was fired for plagiarism. He has also reported for Vice and Gawker. Broderick has run the newsletter Garbage Day since 2019.
