Its bloggers have at various times had traffic-based financial incentives — something that has earned it criticism — and it has been willing to pay for exclusives. Denton has said Gawker’s blogs “may inadvertently commit journalism,” but it’s “not the institutional intention.”

Despite these statements, Gawker sites have broken a number of national stories, ranging from hacked Sarah Palin emails to an exclusive breakdown of an allegedly lost iPhone 4 prototype, which later lead to a Gawker editor’s computers being seized. In February 2011, a Gawker story led within hours to the resignation of New York Congressman Chris Lee.

Gawker has been a common target of some in traditional media who view it as a valueless aggregator, criticized for merely rewriting other people’s stories as posts.

Comments have been an important part of Gawker’s model, one that has been closely watched by media observers. In 2009, Gawker implemented a tiered commenting system that gave privilege to trusted commenters over new ones. After an initial dip, the shift led to an increase in the quality and quantity of comments. Gawker scrapped that model in 2012, replacing it with an algorithmic model for determining featured comments. Gawker also introduced a system that encouraged readers to send tips to the site and track others’ tips. It has devoted a unit within its sales department to developing the comments section as a marketing and branding platform.

In 2013, its Jalopnik blog debuted a new commenting and posting platform called Kinja, which allows more openness to reader content. Kinja was expanded to allow users to write their own headlines and introductions to stories, and to organize and filter comments. While Denton touts Kinja’s potential, some Gawker staffers have been skeptical of its practical utility.

In February 2011, the Gawker properties launched a major redesign, ditching the traditional reverse-chronological blog format in favor of a JavaScript-heavy, two-column format with more room for graphics and video. Denton said the move was necessary in order to highlight the sites’ exclusives, while offering a more magazine-like experience for visitors.

The redesign was met with decidedly negative reviews, with some observers’ praise for the theoretical shift up against pans from many of the site’s readers. Denton himself eventually admitted the initial rollout of the redesign was deeply flawed, and a number of fixes and tweaks were rolled out in the following weeks. Numbers from Quantcast indicate Gawker Media’s readership has declined significantly since the redesign, although Denton has said estimates of the decline have been too large. April 2011 traffic numbers from comScore indicated that Gawker’s traffic had recovered somewhat since the redesign.