The Britney-and-Brangelina crowd may shed a tear (or not): Gawker reported Thursday that the New York Post has closed down PageSix.com, the online arm of its famed gossip page, after just three months in business.
Citing tough economic conditions, PageSix.com Senior Vice President Jennifer Jehn confirmed the shutdown to Gawker's Nick Denton. "Given the difficulty in the economy, it was not the right time for this launch," Jehn reportedly said, adding that the decision would be accompanied by 18 layoffs.
Denton also pointed out that PageSix.com's traffic didn't exactly take off. Here's the thing: With behemoths like AOL's TMZ.com, Sugar Publishing's PopSugar, and the infamous Perez Hilton, online celebrity gossip is a completely saturated market. Despite Page Six's print reputation, it apparently just couldn't compete with Perez's rainbow hair and Microsoft Paint captions.
Nick Denton probably isn't mourning. Gawker Media, which he founded in 2002, operates a number of gossip titles from the eponymous New York media rag to the Hollywood-focused Defamer, and the closing of PageSix.com means one fewer competitor in the mix. But if, as Denton speculates, PageSix.com fell at the hands of an advertising downturn, that could hurt the rest of the gossip press too.
And as a Gawker commenter pointed out, Salon.com ironically published an article about the end of the golden age of celebrity gossip on the same day that PageSix.com closed its doors.
Note: This story was updated at 6:00 a.m. PDT to include a correction from a New York Times representative regarding TimesSelect subscriber figures cited by the New York Post.
Citing anonymous sources, the New York Post has reported that rival Manhattan paper The New York Times is planning to do away with TimesSelect, the subscription-only content on its NYTimes.com Web site. According to the article by Holly M. Sanders, the main obstacle at the moment is reconfiguring the site's software.
A Times representative told CNET News.com that the company isn't releasing any statement beyond: "We continue to evaluate the best approach for NYTimes.com." The representative did point out, however, that the Post had made an error: Sanders' article said that the number of TimesSelect subscribers had fallen from 224,000 in April to slightly over 221,000 in June. According to the Times, TimesSelect subscriber numbers have actually risen from 220,090 in April to 224,580 in June.
The demise of TimesSelect, which has been in operation since 2005 and puts archived content as well as popular opinion pieces behind a subscription wall, has been rumored for some time among New York media circles. Adding fuel to the fire is News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch. When speaking about his decision to purchase Wall Street Journal company Dow Jones, he suggested that the Journal might free up its own premium content.
New-media pundits have typically been very critical of TimesSelect, considering it a disadvantage for the legendary publication to be locking up so much content, particularly opinion pieces by well-known writers. "By cutting stars like Tom Friedman and Frank Rich off from the rest of the Internet," Peter Kafka of the Silicon Alley Insider commented in July, "the Times has diminished its (and their) influence--and helped create room for upstarts like The Huffington Post to step in."
Currently, TimesSelect subscribers pay $7.95 per month, or $49.95 per year, for access to op-ed columnists, archives dating back to 1851, extra multimedia features, and occasional access to the Sunday paper's articles before they are made available for free or in print.
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