Many of Gawker's best writers had already jumped ship to start indie projects by the time they seppuku'd by leaving that Hulk Hogan video up. Splinter News and The Awl were both started by ex-Gawker people.
Original Gawker may have been special but towards the end they had already become a lazy aggregator chasing Buzzfeed's audience.
This is why we need webrings again. It shouldn't take stumbling on a random internet comment by someone privy to the newsroom drama to figure out where the good journalism has ran off to.
I understand journalists need to pay the bills. Still, they are journalists, and they are in this field because they like journalism not because they like money. Often times today, they are freelancing anyhow versus working a regular position. You'd think there would be a little bit more passion projects going on outside of their freelance billpaying work. I know downtime is important too though and its a stressful job.
