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The Crucifixion of David Geithner, In Which Gawker Learns
the Meaning of "Don't Shit Where You Eat," and Conde Nast
Gets a Clue About What to Do With Reddit
by Charles Carreon
July 23, 2015
Condé Nast
 Condé
Montrose Nast, founder of the Conde Nast publishing empire,
found his métier selling advertising for Collier’s Weekly
back at the start of the last century. He had a knack for
finding the unexploited niche. He bought Vogue and Vanity
Fair and grew them into arbiters of culture. House & Garden,
Glamour, Travel, and other special interest publications
harvested a fortune in advertising revenue. He died in 1942,
having lost most of his fortune in the Great Depression.
Today, “Conde Nast Publications” the dba of “Advance
Magazine Publishers, Inc.” is at the center of an
international media corporation such as the founding Condé
could not likely have imagined. But in an ironic twist, the
old advertising man’s ghost may have put the stake in the
heart of that feckless media outlet known as Gawker.
Don’t Shit Where You Eat
Let’s start by discussing Gawker’s faux pas du jour,
outing David Geithner, brother of the former Treasury
Secretary, for the sin of trying to meet with a gay porn
star at the Four Seasons and make love like crazed weasels,
as Akbar and Jeff might have put it. Somehow, all of the
news media appears to be missing the obvious angle on this
story, that clearly illustrates the wisdom of that old
aphorism: “Don’t shit where you eat.”
Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder, has told the world that he
engaged in some soul-searching, and realized that Gawker had
crossed some line that only he can see:
“The point of this story was not in my view sufficient
to offset the embarrassment to the subject and his
family…”
But the New York Times captured this far more salient quote:
“If the post had remained up, we probably would have
triggered advertising losses this week into seven
figures.”
Gee, why would Gawker have been at risk of suffering over a
million a week in advertising losses? Since their total ad
revenue last year was only $45 Million, it sounds like they
were essentially about to have their plug pulled. Well,
maybe this factoid has something to do with it: David
Geithner, the victim of the gay-outing story, is Conde
Nast’s Chief Financial Officer. Which is discoverable by
googling “David+Geithner+LinkedIn”. See my stellar research
results above, with David’s features compassionately
blurred. Hmmm, you would think that an editor like Tommy
Craggs, who teaches Journalism at NYU, and purportedly
resigned in a fit of pique when Gawker pulled the Geithner
piece, might have sniffed out the fact that they were about
to embarrass a man who is not only politically connected at
the highest levels of U.S. politics, but also was in a
position to throttle Gawker’s flow of advertising dollars.
David Geithner has a contact list with many billion dollar
names in it. When a man like David Geithner is unhappy,
cornered, endangered, he does have resources to strike back.
And he did.
Gawker Media’s Offshore Incorporation In the
Media-Unfriendly Cayman Islands – A Strange Choice for A
First Amendment Fundamentalist
Gawker Media, parent company for Gawker, Deadspin, and
Jezebel, relies on the First Amendment to legitimize what it
does: embarrass and pick people apart whose primary sin is
having a name that can serve as link-bait. Gawker’s so
dedicated to the American Way, and so fearless of legal
consequences of its irresponsible web-speech, that it’s
incorporated in the Cayman Islands. As we know, that’s where
corporations hide their money to avoid paying taxes in the
U.S. But what you may not know is that it’s got very
media-unfriendly libel laws, [1] and maintains a list of
banned books, magazines, and trade publications that it is a
crime to import into the islands. [2] Ah, well, as
Mark Twain breezily said of his choices for the afterlife:
“Hell for company, Heaven for climate.”
Wrestling With A Greater Force
I do think Hulk Hogan, who’s suing Gawker Media for
publishing a sex tape of the wrestler grappling in the nude
with the wife of a friend, might want to consider filing
suit in the Caymans. Hogan’s lawsuit, filed in Florida, has
apparently put the fear into Denton. When trial was delayed
earlier this year, the New York Post quoted Denton: “‘I will
be able to take a summer vacation after all,’ he said,
visibly breathing a sigh of relief.”
During this lawsuit, signs of desperation have emerged.
Denton has disclosed disappointing financial results for
Gawker Media in an apparent effort to minimize the risk of a
large punitive damages award. [3] Gawker has tried to
prevent the Cayman Islands incorporation of Gawker Media
from coming before the jury, and his lawyers have pushed the
strained theory that Hogan, whose true name is Terry Bollea,
conspired with the FBI to alter the evidence [4]:
Gawker Lawyer: “In my judgment Mr. Bollea has used the
arms of the federal grand jury to try and suppress
[evidence] … I didn’t know that the FBI was in the
business of doing that…”
The Court: “Well, I would be very surprised if that’s
what’s going on here. I realize why it’s in your best
interests to say something like that, but I would be
very surprised to say that’s going on.”
Gawker’s Labor Troubles and the GamerGate Revenue Hit
Gawker Media is a real cool company to work for anyway, or
at least that’s what Gawker’s unpaid interns thought until
they decided to file a class-action lawsuit under the Fair
Labor Standards Act for their unpaid years of working at
Gawker from 2008 - 2010. The lawsuit has been certified as a
class action, and Gawker is now battling over procedural
issues, such as whether, as Gawker's lawyers argue, the
plaintiffs should be prevented from using the “inflammatory”
Twitter hashtags “#fairpay” and “#livingwage” to notify
their fellow class-members of their eligibility to
participate in the case. Seriously -- “fair pay” is
inflammatory? You can see Nick Denton peering down at the
New York plebes swarming the sidewalks below his corner
office, grumbling to himself, “Fair labor, my ass!
Communism!”
Gawker’s lawyers also are trying to prevent the plaintiffs
from linking to online material about Gawker’s “GamerGate”
troubles – that the lawyers characterize as an “unrelated
political issue.” Whatever the judge concludes, the
financial community paid plenty of attention to GamerGate.
What happened there? Poor little old Gawker has been crying
the blues, claiming it got “rolled” by the “dishonest
fascists of Gamergate,” that Gawker author Max Read called
“a campaign of dedicated
anti-feminist internet trolls using an ill-informed mob
of alienated and resentful video game-playing teenagers and
young men to harass and intimidate female activist,
journalists, and critics.”
Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say about your
readership, is it now? Gawker has been the news outlet of
choice for alienated and resentful video game-playing
teenagers. Gawker claims that the Gamergaters injured its
revenues with an effective, damaging campaign to get major
advertisers to pull their ads from Gawker, but it seems
equally likely that it was angry social warriors who set
about damaging Gawker’s advertising revenue picture. It's
hard to know where the truth lies when all the reportage on
the issue is from Gawker itself, that is simultaneously
trying to keep psycho gamer bullies from destroying its
business model without alienating those casually sadistic
mainstream readers who think that scandal and public
humiliation are good fun so long as they don't get "out of
hand." Trotting out the schizophrenic Gawker party line,
Read wrote:
“Mercedes-Benz—listed on the site as a former partner,
and therefore a target—briefly paused its ads on a
network that serves ads to Gawker. I've been told that
we've lost thousands of dollars already, and could
potentially lose thousands more, if not millions.
Consequently, the editorial director of Gawker Media,
Joel Johnson, took to the front page of Gawker to
clarify that Sam
Biddle does not want to bully anyone, and that
Gawker Media as a company and institution is not
pro-bullying.”
Gawker’s (former) Editor Tommy Craggs’ Journalistic Ethics:
“The Measure of Scurrilousness Your Brand Will Bear”
Tommy Craggs, the Gawker editor who reportedly “resigned”
when Denton pulled the David Geithner smear piece, is one of
the die-hard Free Hate-Speech editors who have been
substituting malice and injury for insight and clarity in
the journalistic profession. He has a job at NYU teaching
sports journalism, because he became an important guy when
he worked at the Gawker sports-site, Deadspin, where he
apparently fostered sports scandals for a living. Craggs was
gifted in this field, because he was quicker to publish the
questionable statements of unreliable witnesses than his
competitors, or perhaps, allowed his reporters to imagine
having heard things that were never said.
Just about a year ago, while at Deadspin, Craggs was forced
to retract an article about a Republican Congressman, Cory
Gardner, entitled
“Is a Colorado Senate Candidate Lying About His Football
Career?” The football “career” referred to by Deadspin,
that usually covers college and professional sports, was
Rep. Gardner’s high school career as a varsity
footballer. Gardner had joked that his school was so
small that he played both offense and defense positions
because there were not enough student players to allow them
to specialize. Gawker’s “source,” a fellow who knew Gardner
back in his high school days, later denied misinforming
Gawker about the facts, telling the Denver Post that during
high school, Rep. Gardner “was not a starter, but he played
in those years.” The Daily Caller’s Alex Griswold laid into
Deadspin "reporter" Dave McKenna for his “reportage” of
totally false facts after Rep. Gardner posted a photo of
himself dressed in football gear, wearing his high school
jersey:
“It isn’t entirely clear why McKenna thought a Senate
candidate’s offhand comment about his high school
football days was worthy of such serious inquiry to
begin with, but perhaps his characterization of
Gardner’s views as ‘homo-hatin’ and climate-change-denyin’
conservatism’ ought to give you a clue.” [6]
Yes, you can see there’s nothing like being too eager to
throw a brickbat to screw up your aim. Typically, Craggs
blamed the source for the slanderous publication: “After the
story was published, the main source we’d relied on reversed
himself on a key point….” Because, you know, Gawker’s always
right.
Gawker’s slander of Rep. Gardner was overlooked as a bit of
necessary roughness inflicted by a man who had earned his
bones by toppling a modern-day legend -- Manti Te’o – the
Notre Dame football player who was fooled by a love-besotted
gay Internet prankster, who impersonated a young woman to
flirt online with Teo, a guileless Mormon, then kicked the
hoax over the top, telling Te'o the girl had died in a
heart-wringingly tragic fashion. Te'o's teammates took over
at that point, making her their posthumous mascot, for whom
with the latter-day fervor of chivalrous knights seeking the
grail for the glory of their lady, they battled their way to
Catholic grid-iron glory on the fields hallowed by Knut
Rockne, as played by Ronald Reagan. When presented with the
possibility of breaking this story,
Craggs, without texting a picture of his penis, IM'd his
source: “Oh man, I have such a hard-on. I want this story. I
want it I want it I want it.”
Craggs was hailed for having scooped ESPN and the major
media, but in the aftermath of the celebration, it turned
out that there was no evidence that Manti Te’o himself was
anything other than a victim of the hoax.
The National Sports Journalism Center (NSJC) questioned
Craggs about whether it was journalistically proper to
quote a “friend” of Manti’s as saying he was “80% sure” the
footballer was in on the hoax, [7] and Craggs was
dismissive of the charge, replying, “This is a concern
troll’s complaint. It’s moronic.” [8] Craggs responded to
the NSJC reporter’s questions with bellicose rants,
disclosing without being asked, that he never tried to
contact the football player, Notre Dame, or family members
who might have offered his side of the story. Explaining the
"no rules" rule that Gawker lives by, he inadvertently
revealed what can only be called a sociopathic editorial
policy:
“We’re a tabloid at heart. You ask if we have a policy.
There is no policy for this, or for anything, really.
The whole point of the company is that we trust
our reporters to be smart and judicious without having
to adopt the ethical pretense that what they’re
doing is anything but a sort of professionalized
rudeness. I’ll get killed for this, but:
Journalism ethics is nothing more than a measure of the
scurrilousness your brand will bear. That’s it.
Ethics has nothing to do with the truth of things, only
with the proper etiquette for obtaining it, so as to
piss off the fewest number of people possible.”
Well, the day came when Gawker pissed off not only a large
number of people, but a large number of rich people who buy
advertising from Gawker. And Craggs was right – they didn’t
want to reveal the truth, they wanted to hide it, because a
very powerful man was being hurt. The smell of shit had
invaded the cafeteria.
In trying to figure out why Tommy Craggs is a bellicose,
self-justifying turd-slinger, we can shortcut heavy
analysis. He doesn’t really like to work, and he thinks he’s
a journalistic genius who oozes worldly wisdom. You pick up
on that when you read the "syllabus"
for his sports-writing class at the Arthur L. Carter
Journalism Institute, where he described the six weeks of
classwork with a repetitious recitation that aims to be
droll but comes off as smug and lazy:
Tentative syllabus, subject to complete revision if I
come up with some better ideas:
Week 1: Blogging. We'll talk about the advantages and
disadvantages of writing about sports from your couch.
Week 2: Beat reporting/statistics. We'll talk about the
advantages and disadvantages of writing about sports
from a press box. We'll look at statistically informed
sportswriting, and the idiotic civil war that erupted a
decade or so ago over the rise of analytics.
Week 3: Column writing. How to craft an argument. How
not to craft an argument. How not to come off like a
dull, sermonizing crank less interested in sports as an
entertaining spectacle than as an apparatus of moral
justice.
Week 4: Features. We'll dissect some of the great works
of sports journalism.
Week 5: Investigations/FOIA. We'll look at the many
underutilized tools at an enterprising sportswriter's
disposal.
Week 6: Scandal reporting/presentation of final
assignments.
You know, this class Tommy Craggs is teaching is supposed to
be happening “this summer,” so there may be time to catch
that last class on “scandal reporting.” He’s really mastered
the art, at this point, I think all would agree. As
the New York Times said in its July 21, 2015 front page
article entitled "2 Gawker Editors Resign Over Article's
Removal":
“When Gawker posted an article on Thursday night about a
married male media executive’s futile attempt to hire a
gay escort, it was hoping to create a scandal.
But this was not the scandal it had in mind.”
The 80/20 Rule
Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? According to this rule,
said to apply generally to dynamic systems, 80% of the
traffic runs on 20% of the roads, businesses earn 80% of
their profits from 20% of their customers, etc. It applies
negatively as well – a business gets 80% of its problems
from 20% of its customers. In this case, Gawker is getting
80% of its problems from 20% of its content, and I suspect
that much of that toxic 20% has been flowing from the pens
of Craggs’ bilious minions.
Ignorance Has A Price
We might say that the problem comes from Craggs’ belief that
“Ethics has nothing to do with the truth of things, only
with the proper etiquette for obtaining it…” Such a
blithe attitude towards truth, and the reduction of ethics
to a matter of procedure, will always lead to
self-destructive arrogance that ignores first one norm of
conscience, then another, then another, until at last, the
entire sense of responsibility to society for one’s actions
completely collapses.
A person reduced to that condition cannot even remember
basic rules like, “Don’t shit where you eat.” A company like
Conde Nast may not have a cool site name like Gawker, or its
own troll army, but it can still protect its CFO from an
Internet lynching. David Geithner was not a man to be
trifled with. He sits where the original Conde Montrose Nast
sat – in the office where the money gets counted, and the
checks get written. In this age, and every age, ink-stained
wretches have done the dirty work of the powerful, and
rarely rise up against them. Like Buzzfeed, that got busted
pulling posts that slammed its advertisers, Gawker has been
revealed cravenly bending its knee before power. I can hear
satisfied laughter issuing from the grave where Condé
Montrose Nast rests.
People Who Live in Glass Houses
Shouldn't Fund Stone-Throwing Competitions
 David
Geithner had the power to take down a Gawker post after it
had already been read 400,000 times. That is a not
inconsiderable power, as the departure of Craggs the Ogre
indicates. True vileness will not abide suppression, and
whatever Geithner did to pull in the chokechain on Denton's
penile shaft, Craggs felt the pressure on his own throat.
The separation of Denton and Craggs at this point may have
required surgical intervention from lawyers working overtime
to manage the extraction.
Whatever the terms of Craggs' departure agreement, I assure
you they were not amicable, or unprofitable to Craggs.
Denton has too many problems living like gremlins in his
office, threatening to hurl him down from his ultramontane
heights into the surging crowds of nobodies below, to
tolerate any more endangerment of Gawker's fragile financial
status. He's got to get rid of the crazies now, and the king
of the crazies was Craggs. When Denton sent his missive to
those disgruntled by the takedown of the Geithner post,
telling them that he certainly understood that they might
want to enjoy freer speech elsewhere, I do believe he was
saying "don't let the door bump you in the ass on the way
out."
Now you've got to wonder whether David
Geithner is going to clean his own house. After all,
he stood silently by, counting cash, and fiddling with
spreadsheets, while Ellen Pao was burned alive at the stake
by Reddit communities whose bandwidth is paid for by Conde
Nast, that owns that entire stockyards/slaughterhouse
operation. That is the business that Reddit is in, right? It
sure as hell smells like about 10,000 cows shitting on each
other, about to die. While Ellen was burning, Geithner
was fiddling like Nero, you might say, because Ellen was his
employee, and the symbol of corporate authority at Reddit.
By spending his time hooking up with boytoys instead of
managing his business responsibly and humanely, he created a
hazardous environment for himself. When it exploded into
flames around him, he should have thought, "I shouldn't have
let all of those flammable materials build up at Reddit, and
I should have realized that what happened to Ellen could
happen to me." But he probably still hasn't thought that.
Even now, the crucifixion of David
Geithner is being sold as the moment of redemption for a
sick Internet. Thanks to the sacrifice of a young, noble,
white man, the minds of the mighty have been turned towards
a weighty problem. Additionally,
the psychic murder of Ellen Pao is being covered up by
the glad tidings of Geithner's resurrection. His suffering,
and the subsequent reestablishment of the primacy of money
as the final bulwark of moral worth, has put the publishing
world right.
The bullies have been reduced to servants subordinate to the
right of the lord to have first place in human society.
Thou shalt not cast stones at the mighty.
But David Geithner looks all about him
and sees the broken windows that once provided lovely views,
and feels the howling wind that they once kept out. Surely
he is free now to separate himself from the mob of unruly
stonethrowers, and like Denton, who has found repentance at
the bottom of an emptying checkbook, adopt a practical
morality. People who live in glass houses are ill advised to
fund stone throwing competitions.
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Notes:
1. “A Reprobate’s Best Friend,” by D. Marchant
http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2012/04/11/A-reprobate%E2%80%99s-best-friend-%E2%80%93-British-libel-law/
2. “Banned Books, Libel, Voodoo, remain criminal in Cayman
Islands”
http://repeatingislands.com/2015/02/19/banned-books-libel-voodoo-remain-criminal-in-cayman-islands/
3.
http://observer.com/2015/07/breaking-despite-hulk-of-a-lawsuit-financials-show-gawker-making-money-moves/
4.
http://theralphretort.com/gawker-in-a-bad-place-according-to-own-financial-expert-hogan-trial-update-704015/
5.
http://gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-the-dishonest-fascists-of-gamergat-1649496579
6. “Deadspin Badly Fumbles Hit
Piece on Republican Candidate”
http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/15/deadspin-badly-fumbles-hit-piece-on-republican-candidate/
7.
http://www.shermanreport.com/deadspin-shouldnt-have-used-80-percent-sure-quote-about-teos-possible-involvement/
8.
http://sportsjournalism.org/uncategorized/journalistic-standards-in-reporting-of-the-teo-hoax-qa-with-deadspins-tommy-craggs/
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