{"id":537895,"date":"2010-04-21T17:24:43","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T21:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"tag:contentnext.com,2010-04-21:article\/419-gadget-media-gawkers-lost-iphone-story-denton-would-do-it-again"},"modified":"2010-04-21T17:24:43","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T21:24:43","slug":"gadget-media-gawkers-lost-iphone-story-denton-would-do-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/537895","title":{"rendered":"Gadget Media: Gawker’s ‘Lost’ iPhone Story: Denton Would Do It Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The big device news this week was Gizmodo’s post<\/a> about the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL<\/a>) engineer who lost<\/a> a prototype for the next generation iPhone. Naturally, that was the lead topic kicking off paidContent parent ContentNext’s State of Gadget Media<\/a> conference held at Edelman’s SoHo offices, as MediaMemo<\/em>‘s Peter Kafka<\/strong> put the first question to Nick Denton<\/strong>, head of Gawker Media, publisher of Gizmodo<\/em>. One of the controversial aspects of the news was Gawker’s use of “checkbook journalism” to get the story. As Jeff Bercovici pointed out<\/a>, Gawker could face legal issues regarding the handling of possibly stolen goods. So Kafka asked Denton if there was anything he would have done differently. Denton, without missing a beat, answered no. Except for one thing.\n<\/p>\n

The only thing Denton would have done differently was to wait to out<\/a> the hapless engineer, Gray Powell, so soon after the initial story. “We could have waited a few days and milked the pageviews.”<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, according to Denton, there have been a lot of pageviews and visits. On average, Gizmodo gets about 500,000 uniques a day; the iPhone story pushed it to 2 million.<\/p>\n

Rafat Ali<\/strong>, publisher and editor of ContentNext, asked Gizmodo<\/em> competitors how they would have handled the story. Scott Ard<\/strong>, editor-in-chief of CNET<\/em> said that they would never pay for a story. “Our readers expect that of us and they care that we don’t pay for news,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t want CNET<\/em> to incentivize criminality. MacRumor<\/em>‘s Arnold Kim<\/strong> also said that he wouldn’t pay for news, but if he had the story about the lost iPhone, he certainly would have run it.<\/p>\n

As a marketer, Kim Titus<\/strong>, public relations director for Samsung, has watched the iPhone story this week with amusement. But from a news story, he sympathizes with Apple, saying it hasn’t helped the product. “The news that has emanated from Gizmodo<\/em>‘s story is all about how they got the news, nothing about the product itself,” Titus said. “It’s all journalists talking about journalists.” At that, Denton, seeming a bit weary of the topic himself, said with more than a dash of sarcasm, “Yes, that’s always interesting.”<\/p>\n

Track up-to-the-minute coverage on State of Gadget Media on Twitter via the #gadgetmedia<\/a> hashtag<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

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