It didn’t take long for Nick Denton to react to Grigoriadis’ “Everybody Sucks” cover feature at New York magazine Oct. 22. issue. For him, having his gossip blog profiled in “one of the last bastions of old-school journalism” is “something of a rite of passage.”
His tone hints annoyance at the announcement of his sexual inclinations in the piece in addition to the printing of information about writers having sex, “occasionally with each other,” and doing drugs. But what he got really mad about was the use of the word “bile” to qualify Gawker approach towards its subjects.
To get back at award-winning profile writer Grigoriadis, Denton dug into the piles of articles written about Gawker.com and sister site Wonkette, a D.C. gossip Web site. Ironically, he pointed out what Slate’s Jack Shafer wrote:

“Are these blogs a part of the better world we hope to leave to our sons and daughters? Well, yes, if we intend for our children to grow strong from sucking bile instead of milk.” [Slate, March 2004]

Acknowledging that the new journalism is indeed solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, Denton says that his creation is “a proxy for this harsh and competitive new world, because the gossip site covers the death agonies of Manhattan’s old-line media industry, without much respect for the club’s cosy rules.”

But he doesn’t want to take all the blame, so he invokes other kings of insult like Perez Hilton and TMZ.com for reassurance.
It is a fact that public acts of slur exert some sort of fascination over people. No wonder I am chattering about the Gregoriadis-versus-Denton brouhaha. But at some point enough is enough.

So, bloggers: Let’s  exercise some constraint with the power of the pen. There must be some other ways to be humorous and alternative outlets to exorcise our demons.