Salon Piles On Gawker: Mary Elizabeth Williams, Hamilton Nolan Debate Proper Criticism
In case you missed it, Salon, the online news magazine, and Gawker, the place for all things snark, have been tussling the past two days. While it looks somewhat quiet on the western front now, it has been only a couple of hours.
The fight reignited when Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote a column Wednesday titled "I was slimed by Gawker." In the piece, Williams takes issue with the fact that Gawker called her a "hack" and said other unpleasant things about her. Gawker used a photo of her that ran with a Salon column announcing her cancer diagnosis.
Williams didn’t target any specific writer at Gawker, but rather suggested the pieces were emblematic of Gawker's culture. Gawker outed a media executive last week on the word of an escort and potential blackmailer. When senior management stepped in and removed the post, Gawker editors quit on journalistic principle. Someone might argue that Williams’ piece provided an interesting insight into what it feels like to become a Gawker media spectacle.
Gawker fired back Thursday with the piece "Writing and What Comes With It." In it, Hamilton Nolan outs himself as the writer who criticized Williams and defends his pieces. Nolan suggests that contemporary media discussions act as a "Hegelian dialectic," where writers are offering points and counterpoints to other writers. Nolan stands by his criticism and says the photo Gawker used was "perfectly lovely."
Williams has taken to her Twitter feed to defend herself over the past two days.
And Thursday night, Salon writer Arthur Chu joined in on social media and with his own column, "Where the Absolute Right to Snark Turns Sour." Chu points out that Gawker did some positive and some negative things, but argues that Gawker has become "the man" and uses its power for bad. He hits on the latest Gawker problems, as well as its takedown of senate candidate Christine O’Donnell and, expectedly, Gawker’s take on Williams. Chu has since been defending himself online.
And Williams has also kept up the fight.
Gawker doesn't seem to have responded, but Chu said on his Twitter feed he expects they might. Williams, on the other hand, appears to be battling Twitter trolls.
Luckily, we don't have to pick sides in this debate. We're just here to report the news.
© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.