Aol. blogger Jeff Bercovici was totally unable to digest his dinner last night because he was SCANDALIZED and OUTRAGED about Gizmodo's "checkbook journalism" regarding the new iPhone. Sure, Gawker Media had already long-ago returned Steve Jobs' missing iPhone, but that would not settle his OUTRAGE. He writes: "Gawker Media brazenly, publicly flouted the law. It subsidized a crime: the selling of stolen merchandise. Then it published a misleading, whitewashed account of the seller's actions meant to make it look as though he was not acting with criminal intent. It published this account in order to disguise its own culpability in the matter." Oh mercy!

Reporter John Cook has departed Gawker. Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton wildly undermined Cook on the way out the door, writing that "Gawker's awesome John Cook is about to disappear into the maw of Yahoo" on his Twitter. This is Yahoo's bazillionth hire in the last few months.

Nick Denton has de facto fired Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder; and announced the purchase of Cityfile. On Friday, Snyder announced Gawker's record traffic. Remy Stern is now the editor of Gawker. (Stern, a founder of Cityfile, has desired the top Gawker job since at least 2004.) Two memos circulated in-house, dated one minute apart.

What we've seen in companies that have been successful through the last year-so we're excluding, say, the car companies and most of the media companies oh and real estate and physical goods, etc.-is they've both shed staff and, both independently and relatedly, increased their revenues. Interestingly, this graph from Gawker honcho Nick Denton is pretty darn similar to what it would look like if you graphed Goldman Sachs' expenses and revenues, with even some similar trending during the same quarters! In both these cases, on the micro-scale of Gawker Media, as a small company, and the macro-scale of a big one like Goldman Sachs, there's no decline in revenue [...]

Tonight Gizmodo semi-explained how they came by the next-generation iPhone: an apparently drunk developer left it in a bar in California. On March 18. Which then somehow wended its way to Gizmodo-to be posted about a month later. (We presume some of that time involved the Gawker Media legal department doing their job.) Gizmodo is currently being absolutely roasted in the comments for naming the drunk Apple employee. They do not confirm the amount paid to the "finder" of the iPhone in the post-but their boss confirmed our earlier-reported $5000 figure to the Times. And this is interesting! Title 18, US Code, Section 2314 and [...]

This screen, mounted above the reception desk at Gawker Media's headquarters, currently displays blog posts from across the network with the most unique visitors over the course of the last hour. The names of the posts' authors are included. Earlier this week, we discussed the TV-watching cows of Russia, and suggested that, instead of pretty scenery, the cows be shown pictures of the best, most productive cows. After all, every animal likes the bellyfeel of gazing at a more successful animal. Plus, there's also a nice chilling effect! As we wrote the other day, "there's nothing more motivating than the fear that if you don't churn out [...]

"We all know that some pageviews are worth more than others," writes Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton today in an internal memo. "Think of an exclusive such as Gawker's embassy hazing pics, Deadspin's expose of ESPN's horndoggery, Gizmodo's first look of the new Microsoft tablet or io9's Avatar review. An item which gets picked up and draws in new visitors is worth more than a catnip slideshow that our existing readers can't help but click upon."

Gawker Media's advertising/video/advertorial department has produced the ultimate 3-minute trailer to tease its sexy web properties to ad sales folks! Actually, it looks like a sales pitch for the network, really. Hmm. Either way! We rounded up some responses from Gawker Media former employees.

…. and he wants his iPhone back. Oooh. In other news, receiving stolen property, in the state of California, is often charged as a misdemeanor. (Interstate receipt, however, under federal law? Well, things get a little more hectic.) But we're still awaiting the explanation on how Gizmodo came to have the opportunity to pay $5K (we believe) for the missing alleged new prototype iPhone. Could be totally legit!

It's time for us to update the Gawker Media seating chart, as the company has a new plan! Previously, we saw that 1/4 of desks were designated editorial, and 1/4 were for subletters. But things have changed quite a bit. For one thing, editorial is sprawling.

Exciting news over at the world's last profitable (online) magazine company, Gawker Media! We're hearing that the company's widespread use of full-time yet non-employee contractors is finally being ended. Workers at the company's various blogs will have the choice between going full-time, as actual employees, or staying as contract workers, but only working four days a week. This is awesome news for those among us who were afraid that in the hideous future, no one would ever find employee status anywhere again. On a day-to-day level, this is less awesome for Gawker Media employees, who have to choose between being squeezed into the office (where, exactly?) for every workday [...]