Gawker combining tech news blogs

Gawker Media said Thursday it is combining its tech-focused blogs — Gizmodo, which tends to focus on hardware, and the more entertainment-oriented io9, as well as several smaller blogs like Paleofuture — into a single unit run by current io9 editor Annalee Newitz, reports Matthew Ingram of GigaOm.

Ingram writes, “Over the past year or so, the tech-media market has become more competitive than it has been for some time, as The Verge from Vox Media has become a much more significant presence, and BuzzFeed has been expanding — including the recent launch of a tech bureau based in San Francisco — and newer players such as Fusion and Vice have started covering the sector. Both Vox and BuzzFeed have also raised substantial amounts of venture capital to fund their expansion, with BuzzFeed’s latest round valuing the company at about $800 million.

“The various Gawker blogs that are part of the new tech unit will still have their own sites, with io9 being run by Charlie Jane Anders, but all of the staff — which adds up to more than 35 writers and editors, as well as a number of freelancers — will report to Newitz. Current Gizmodo editor Brian Barrett was offered a different job as part of the tech team, but has decided to leave the company, although ‘we hope not for too long,’ Denton said in a brief IM interview.

“Newitz said in her introductory blog post that in addition to depth and analysis, she expects the team behind the Future Initiative to take on stories that other media outlets would be afraid to touch because they might offend their venture-capital backers or the large media entity of which they are a part.”

Read more here.