Gawker Lays Off Its One Female Employee

Posted by Jessica Wakeman, Takepart at 11:32 AM on December 3, 2008.

This post first appeared on TakePart.

Say what you will about Gawker. They’re too snarky, or they’re not funny at all, or they’re not insider-y enough anymore.

But you can say for sure that they’ve got that same old broken record problem on their hands that has trailed too many journalism outlets:

Today, Gawker.com laid off its one female staffer, Sheila McClear.

Don’t misunderstand me: I understand that Gawker Media’s model is to continue to employ bloggers with the highest pageviews, and surely there’s other internal decisions those of us in the chattering classes aren’t privy to, as well.  McClear (or Maureen “Moe” Tkacik, a Jezebel-then-Gawker blogger was let go earlier this year) should not have been kept on staff just as a token female (like the blogosphere’s Sarah Palins).  That’s always the first shrill, defensive cry I hear -- from men, of course!  especially men in the positions of power to fix the diversity problem! -- when I bitch about the lack of women writing for or on staff at a publication.

But clearly the concept of tokenism doesn’t even need to be discussed: Gawker, after all, launched the careers of Elizabeth Spiers, Jessica Coen and Emily Gould into the stratosphere. The hiring powers at be -- owner Nick Denton, I guess? -- is not a dinosaur.  I’m not crying sexism; I’m crying  lets-hope-temporary f*cked-up-ism. McClear (and Tkacik) could and should be quickly replaced.

Here’s hoping the company doesn’t dilly-dally ... although in this economy, I wouldn’t be suprised if there aren’t any hirings anytime soon.  And here is where I make the trite-ist of blogger observations:

Sad.

(p.s. Please don’t tell me an all-boy Gawker is okay because Jezebel is all-girls.  Jezebel is a site aimed towards women and I would argue they could use a man or two on staff.  But Gawker is, and has always been, a non-gender specific blog.)

Tagged as: gender, media, diversity, gawker