![]() As a publishing model it was simplicity itself. In August 2002 he launched a blog called, which gives the inside scoop on new gadgets before the print media has even managed to get the toys out of the box. If he pursued this one he could only lose money. This time though, I told him, he was wrong. Following a career in journalism, Denton had already made a small fortune from other internet businesses. Who, I asked, wants to read what ordinary people have to say? How many of them can actually write? Sure, he'd been spot on before. Ordinary people would publish their thoughts and observations, not just journalists. It would free the net, turn it from something people merely looked at into something to which they contributed. He gave me a long speech about something called 'web logs', or 'blogs' for short. Back then, I asked what he planned to do next. He moved to Manhattan at the start of the decade after leaving another internet venture. Almost all my trips to New York over the past few years have begun with a catch-up here in his impeccable Soho loft, all high white walls and stripped floorboards and sofas to die for. We have been friends for nearly 25 years, since we first met as 16-year-old public schoolboys on the northwest London party circuit. Because while Denton may be new news to some, he's very old news to me. And perhaps I would by now if this interview were not hampered by what can only be described as a container-ship load of personal baggage. Which is why I want to know where he got the video. Advertising Age has called him an 'industry leader' New York magazine has credited his sites with establishing the 'de facto voice of blogs today'. In turn it has secured Denton's reputation as soothsayer and seer on all things net, the go-to guy for predictions on the future of the online world by everybody from Rupert Murdoch to the Telegraph Group. That can only mean one thing: bigger advertising revenues for the company. It was even ahead of the Los Angeles Times. In January, New York-based Gawker Media racked up nearly a quarter of a billion page views, making it the fourth most-visited set of sites when compared against the big US newspapers. It has driven huge volumes of traffic both to Gawker and the dozen or so other smart, sassy blogs that Denton owns, sites which cover everything from the LA film business through travel and sport to porn and politics. Since then the nine-minute sequence - look at those teeth! Listen to that laugh! - has been viewed more than 2.5m times. The Scientologists did everything they could to repress it, of course, forcing YouTube to take it down and throwing out legal letters claiming copyright like they were confetti. we can bring peace and unite cultures.' Denton posted it on his media-gossip blog in the middle of January, and it swiftly became headline news around the world. 'We are the authorities on getting people off drugs,' the Hollywood A-lister tells his Scientologist interviewer. The video in question features Tom Cruise extolling the virtues of Scientology and is both compulsive viewing and buttock-clenchingly embarrassing. Nick Denton is smiling, which is understandable. 'How do you mean "hanging around"? Someone must have given it to you.' 'It had been hanging around for a while.'
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