PageSix.com Gossip Blog Shuttered

Posted on March 22, 2008

Gawker reports that the PageSix.com gossip blog that was spun off from the New York Post's Page Six column has been shut down. The site now redirects to the Post's gossip column.

During the last internet bubble, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation used its Page Six brand to launch a new entertainment website, Pagesix.com. The property has had an even shorter life this cycle: Pagesix.com, which was largely independent of the newspaper's Page Six print column, is being shuttered immediately; it had been live only since December. The URL already redirects to the New York Post's main website, and the site's staff have had their access to email cut off. Managing Editor, David Boyle, told the site's Los Angeles staff. "Given the difficulty in the economy, it was not the right time for this launch," said Jennifer Jehn, one of the site's managers. A total of 18 editorial and support staffers will be let go and three reassigned within the New York Post.

Gawker also says the website had a day last week with over 1 million pageviews thanks to photos of Eliot Spitzer's hooker Ashley Alexandra Dupre. The site appeared to garnering a fair amount of inbound links. Technorati shows about 700 inbound links for the blog's 3-month run. But Technorati rankings are a trivial matter to a powerful media mogul like Rupert Murdoch, especially when he sees an ad spend decline on the horizon.

Murdoch, disclosing a slowdown in ad revenue at his Fox television stations and newspapers, has predicted a "temporary downturn for a year or so." Other media companies, such as the New York Times, are also suffering from the advertising downturn, and have cut costs by making piecemeal layoffs.

And so the PageSix.com site is dead and owners of competing gossip blogs can breathe a little easier - at least until Murdoch relaunches the site during the next Internet bubble.