The empire grows

The empire grows
: Nick Denton’s empire grows today with Defamer, the Gawker/Wonkette for L.A.: “LA is the world’s cultural capital. Defamer is the gossip rag it deserves.” The design is beautiful. The target is right.

Nick says in his announcement:

You could argue that New York has no need for a gossip blog like Gawker.

There’s Page Six, and Rush & Molloy, and people in power are accustomed to a bit of mockery.

By contrast, in so far as a city ever needed a gossip rag, LA is crying out for a Defamer. For a city that’s in many ways the cultural capital of the world, it’s woefully under-gossiped.

Sure, the celebrity weeklies give the latest tittle-tattle on the reality TV romance of the week. But the real stars of Hollywood are the producers, and agents, and PR flacks, and studio execs, and screenwriters. They’re usually behind the scenes. No longer.

The designer is Patric King; the editorial director is Choire Sicha; the author is anonymous, just to freak out every studio exec in Hollywood.

6 responses to “The empire grows”

  1. MK Avatar

    Sorry folks, but I grew up in LA. It is not the cultural capital of the world, though it likes to think it is.
    If the Defamer is on the job like Gawker and Wonkette are, this should be easy to illustrate in a rather short amount of time.
    Get to it!

  2. old maltese Avatar
    old maltese

    Prof. Reynolds has a cute question:
    ‘DID THEY RUN THIS TITLE BY THE LIBEL LAWYERS?’

  3. Andrea Harris Avatar

    Gossip. Hollywood. Uh — isn’t there a war on or something?

  4. Greg Piper Avatar

    I didn’t like the site design at all – aside from the basic column layout it shares with Gawker and Wonkette. Too goth, dark, film noir-ish. And old-timey, like the template in a mall photo booth. It’s just painful for me to read, even though I love the Gawker empire.

  5. Tim Avatar

    Greg, spot on… I would have preferred a design more in the spirit of Steve Martin’s “L.A. Story”, like a hot dog suspended from a helicopter or whatever…. This film noir crap has nothing to do with LA anymore. Well, maybe a Brit blog-magnate’s impression of what LA should be…

  6. Joan Avatar

    Oh, but don’t you think it evokes the whole “L.A. Confidential” aesthetic, and the gossip rags of that period? Very “Hush-Hush”; I think it’s gorgeous.