Who Didn't Buy Gridskipper from Gawker Media

Hey, it's Gridskipper's last day at the parent company! Who knows what will happen at our shiny new home. I, for one, will be bowing out of my relatively specious remaining duties, and for all we know, Adam's housecat will be in charge after sundown. But there's been lots of speculation — OK, some occasional speculation — regarding who or what might have tried to pry Gridskipper out of Gawker Media's warm, supple, sticky tentacles. Here's the exclusive behind-the-chiffarobe report on what really went down in Nick Denton's smoke-filled lavatory.

Condé Nast: An early favorite for the Gridskipper sale, Condé Nast's online arm CondéNet decided instead to purchase SFO Media, purveyors of HotelChatter and Jaunted. Likely a wise move, since those sites contain 92% fewer hookers and cocaine than Gridskipper, and CN's target demo is more about Viagra and escort services. Only material change will be renaming of SFO sites to HotélChattér and Jauntéd to match pro-diacritic corporate policy.

Gothamist: The venerable network of metro sites contributed a phrase to the Gawker Media editorial lexicon that's still au courant: "too Gothamisty," in reference to a post about something so trivial, micro-local, and/or picayune that it could only end up on a blog created by unpaid freelancers sifting news feeds on their lunch hour. Of course, there's an increasingly narrow gap between content created by the unpaid and the underpaid (or the overpaid, for that matter). Besides, getting Gothamisty was overtly recommended by Gawker management when Gridskipper started posting maps, so full circle, right? Just like Gothamist, Gridskipper already posts about pandas all the time, so a merger would be redundant anyway. Nota bene: Gothamist lord Jake Dobkin is reputedly hung like a horse.

Jason Calacanis: Jason's got his hands full with that Mahalo thing, and he already dumped his last two efforts on AOL, so he's probably got little interest in ruining another brand. Initial proposal to transform Gridskipper into a Twitter-based blog rejected as not challenging enough by Gawker tech.

AOL: They'll buy anything (see above), so seemed like it was worth a shot. The AOL Acquisitions IM Chatbot has been buggy for the last few weeks though; even in the best of times, it's only willing to make VC offers based on stock swaps, and really, come on.

Hearst Corporation: The legendary media combine would hardly notice if Gridskipper was used to caulk the windows of its shiny new Manhattan headquarters, and in fact an offer was on the table to incorporate the blog into the online arm of Town & Country Travel. Sadly, that fell apart when Gridskipper staff revealed their bilious hatred for both towns and the countryside in general.

Travel Ad Network: One of a procession of online pimps who wanted to tart up Gridskipper like a painted whore and pack the archives with spam for credulous advertisers. Mortgage rates at all time lows — click the dancing lady silhouette! New editorial content would focus on the indisputable virtues of JetBlue, Hilton Hotels, and GlaxoSmithKline.

Mark Cuban: Might have purchased Gridskipper if he could use it to antagonize Nick Denton and/or if it was a professional sports team. Cuban now hates all blogs and bloggers except his own blog and (presumably) himself, so this would have been a tough sell. Possible brownie points: The only mention of Cuban on Gridskipper refers to him as "the not-so-secret masturbatory fantasy of every gay man in Dallas."

Tumblr Inc.: As blogs once were to mainstream media (MSM), so Tumblr now is to mainstream blogs (MSB). Gridskipper could have formed the perfect bridge between the two (MSB/TBLR), adopting an all-funny-pictures-plus-daily-lifestyle-complaint strategy. However, though it's charming to tumbl and reblog your friends' adventures, most Tumblrs are as thrilling as a dominatrix with sleep apnea (BDSMZZZ). And Tumblr's occupied with a plan to monetize a series of functions that amount to glorified blog commenting, so hold on to your audacity hats.

Curbed Network: What, you thought Curbed actually bought Gridskipper? Don't be silly. Gridskipper got picked up like a used sofa abandoned outside your college dormitory, except there's about a million monthly pageviews under the cushions. Still, Curbed is good people, and anything that keeps the old family home from getting Sploided is all right by me. Bon voyage.

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