A simple formula pays off at the Valleywag corner of the Gawker Media empire: take a mostly male audience in a notoriously sexually frustrated profession, add a dirty-talking scribe, and watch the page views roll on in.
We have to imagine one-time solo Wagger Nick Douglas, now a special correspondent for Valleywag, must have done a loud facepalm when Melissa Gira Grant signed on to Nick Denton’s Silicon Valley blog and started dishing out R-rated pictures and sex talk.
To think, Douglas’ posts about Eric Schmidt’s personal life were controversial once. Probably still are, but Grant’s relatively anonymous ladies discussed in her post probably aren’t multi-billionaires who could be Denton to painful inconvenience.
Grant’s approach has repeatedly achieved the blogging Holy Grail – page views. “I’m a sex worker, a mistress-for-hire, a whore,” Grant said by way of her introductory post on Valleywag. Now, when you see a young lady wearing little more than a smile on a Valleywag post, it’s a given Grant is on the byline.
As long as she’s racking up thousands of page views, probably to the dismay of writers (ok, maybe not, see comment below) like Paul Boutin, who agreed with our Jason Lee Miller that Valleywag might be thought of as something of a porno site now.
Lighten up, boys. With as many people tuning in to Grant, it’s obvious the Valley isn’t missing the next great startup, not when there’s a woman who will talk frankly, honestly, and above all, dirty to them. The real shocker (ha ha) will be when sites like InfoWorld and Information Week start hiring Grant-clones for their sites.
