Nick Denton has wanted his Gawker Media to be the plugged-in Conde Nast. He has even talked about having the same number of sites as Si has magazines. But now he bites the hand that inspires him with the antimatter to the matter of 4 Times Square: Jezebel, Celebrity, Sex, Fashion without airbrushing. It even comes with a manifesto:
Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women’s magazine we’d want to read, a magazine that would never actually see glossy paper because big-name advertisers and the publishers who kowtow to them don’t much like it when you point out the vulgarity of a $2000 handbag. Women deserve some of the blame here: if men ever bought $2000 handbags, Esquire and GQ might be as bad — and profitable — as Glamour and Vogue. . . .
[W]omen’s magazine covers display what are essentially female forgeries, smothered in makeup, lit and fanned and shot with equipment that could be eBayed to finance an Ivy League education, and computer-aided-artistry involving heavy airbrushing, contouring and rearranging to make hips look leaner and eyes that extra-special, inhuman hue of aquamarine. . . .
When a magazine editor highlights a must-have new creme eyeshadow, pore clarifying serum or sporty little capelet, she not only probably got it for free, she also probably got a meal out of it, and a celeb-studded party, and possibly a trip to Miami to learn of its merits from a carefully cultivated crop of experts, and oh yeah maybe a video iPod from the grateful publicist (with whom she is BFF!) Magazine editors are so buried in free shit that they don’t even realize how much they get, that when the time comes for them to exhort you to invest in the new important color that isn’t black they actually believe their own hype. The truth: black goes with everything, and you probably don’t need any more assistance going broke. . . .
It’s such a hip idea, Si might do it.
