Writing
Thursday 19 December 2002
New Yorker Gawker
I hate linking to things that I’ve seen mentioned on a handful of other sites, but Gawker.com, a “weblog magazine” in and about New York gets me excited for two reasons. First, because I want there to be something like that in London. Is there anything like that in London? Aren’t we simply reduced to the tabloidness of This is London/The Evening Standard or the eternally slap-me-round-the-head-why-did-they-never-get-it dumb Time Out London? Where’s the smart and net-savvy London weblog magazine?
The second thing that gets me excited about Gawker is the right-hand column contains two columns of links. This makes the secondary column seem more beefy and wide, which I like. The LA Times used to do this well. It makes me think computer screens are growing, that we’re inching into the future, that we can absorb more than a single column of information at a time, that third and fourth columns crammed with supportive and related information will gradually appear near our scrollbars until our heads explode in blipvert-like resistance.
Comments
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Colour me unconvinced. The Gawker certainly has a degree of sass, but it doesn't quite sustain the ironic raised eyebrow to avoid it lapsing into cultural buzzword bingo, and the whole 'darling! our urban lives!' thing which is essentially commoditised bullshit.
Perhaps this is because I have been listening to 'The Sunday Format' and (unfortunately) reading the productised Dylan Jones GQ, and the kind of material that Gawker offers is infinitely capable of parody in the 'Format' style. Which means that it's already being done in the weekend supplements and review sections, detailing how Crouch End is the new Hoxton, gin is the new meths and being shot is the new stabbing.
Oh, yeah, I agree Nick. To be honest I didn't spend a whole lot of time reading the stuff on the page partly as the tone all seemed a tad annoying. But I'd still prefer to have something that covered London in an annoying way rather than there being nothing worth reading at all. I mean, I hate weekend supplements, but I still read them.
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