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.
Now that the move is complete, it's not surprising that Denton would take a small dig at his former property. But it's also a fairly accurate financial assessment. While Wonkette has retained a large readership for several years, it's always been the traffic runt of the larger Gawker empire, despite being one of the company's signature properties. For Denton, this was the smartest time to sell. As he noted, traffic is up. But it's also an election year, and who knows if that readership spike will be sustained once the presidential campaign is over? Most likely, it won't.
But the move could also be good for Wonkette as a singular enterprise. Freed from the constraints of Gawker's aversion to taking politics seriously, the site can retain it's foul-mouthed humor, while potentially embracing a more sincerely enthusiastic approach to Washington's political and social scene. As Slate's Troy Patterson wrote last week, political satire is often at its best when playing a watchdog role, rather than simply reducing the subject matter to its lowest common denominator.
Patrick Gavin says it would be a mistake to discount the site's longevity:
Around town, we always hear "Wonkette's not what it used to be" but, to be fair, we've always heard that: We heard that when Ana Marie Cox was there ("not as funny as she used to be"), when Alex Pareene and David Lat took over ("not as funny as Wonkette used to be") and also with the current leadership (again: "not as funny as it used to be") so we're not entirely sold on the "slippery slope" theory since we've pretty much always found it funny.
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