“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.”

And:

So we’re shifting to a new number that more accurately reflects the growth of our audience. This target will encourage original reporting and original thought. The system will reward sites which recruit new readers rather than pandering to a well-established clique. Our editorial will be better as a result.

The target is called “US monthly uniques.” It represents a measure of each site’s domestic audience. This is the figure that journalists cite when judging a site’s competitive position. It’s also the metric by which advertisers decide which sites they will shower with dollars. Finally, a site with plenty of genuine uniques is one that has good growth prospects. Each of those first-time visitors is a potential convert.

What does this mean for the writers-and their pay?

The 2010 system is pretty similar to the one we have had. The individual and site bonuses will be consolidated. Each site will be given a target. The initial target is simply the average US uniques of the last 12 months…. Let’s take an example. io9’s monthly US uniques started 2008 at about the 800,000 level.

The target for the first three months of this year is 1.06m. If the site were to hit 1.2m, that would represent 13% over the target. Writers and editors would receive an average of about 13% bonus in addition to their salary or fees.

The distribution of the bonus pool will be at the discretion of the site’s editor-in-chief, so some will receive more and some none at all. The lead editor may also decide to “bet” part of this bonus pool. For instance she or he might decide to offer a bounty for a spy photo which would boost the site’s uniques that month. Other rules can be clarified with Scott Kidder, our new head of editorial operations.

The tech team will be making more data available so you can see which stories are spreading. In the first instance, we will introduce a count that shows the number of mentions on Twitter. Tom and his colleagues will also display external referrals for each item. Later in the year you can expect those stories that strike a chord to get even greater prominence on the front page — and to remain there much longer.

But it’s mainly up to you — by which I mean you and your editorial colleagues. What can you do to bring in new visitors? Well, first of all, simply keep doing what you’re doing right now! Most of the stories that resonate are also stories with high pageviews — with the flames that everyone so prizes.

Over time I’d hope writers will focus more of their energies on the stories that have the potential to break out on Twitter, Facebook or in TV coverage — which shouldn’t be that big a challenge. It just means you have to be even more original, even more provocative or even more of a hustler than usual.

Happy New Year!

Nick

Also? Quitting smoking appears to increase your risk of developing diabetes: “Smokers are on average 30 per cent more likely than non-smokers to develop type 2 or adult-onset diabetes. Now a study of 10,892 adults over 10 years has found that, in the first six years after giving up, former smokers are 70 per cent more likely than non-smokers to develop the disease.” Good Lord, next they’re going to tell us that smoking actually cures certain kinds of cancers. I’m gonna light up two at the same time right now!

Some more detail on the Kurt Westergaard panic room story: “His five-year-old granddaughter was at the home but immobilised by a leg cast in another room. Westergaard judged he could draw the intruder’s attention away from the child by running to the panic room.” Not sure if that makes it better or worse.

Clay Risen, now formerly of Democracy, also liquor-blogger for the Atlantic, author of A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination and contributing editor for The Morning News, has left that all behind for a job on the New York Times op-ed page. You can start vetting his previous work and his Twitter for LIBERAL BIAS now. (But since you know he loves that crazy radical Martin Luther King so you also already know that he’s somewhere to the left of the socialist Obama administration. HOW TYPICAL.)

As tipped here yesterday in an exquisitely turned riposte from Awl contributor Katie Baker-Bakes, Curtis Allina, the candy company executive who brought the world the modern Pez dispenser, died recently at the age of 87. In case you haven’t yet read his obituary, you should. It is the most interesting article in the New York Times today.

Did you know:

1) “Pez” is a contraction of pfeffermintz, German for “peppermint,” which was the candy’s original flavor. Invented in Vienna in 1927, Pez was originally marketed to adults as an alternative to smoking. (A useless invention, it turns out, as improved 21st-century science now teaches us that there is no reason to not smoke!)

2) Thus, the long-stem, flip-top dispenser design was modeled after cigarette lighters.

3) There is continuing debate among “Pez historians” as to who came up with the idea to put toy-doll heads on the dispensers for the relaunch of the product, newly fruit-flavored and marketed to children.

4) There is a publishing company called Bubba Scrubba Publications. In 1994, Bubba Scrubba published a book called Collecting Pez, by Pez historian David Welch, who insists that no matter whose idea it was to put heads on the dispensers, Allina was the greenlighter. “The idea came from the United States. And for the idea to have come out of the United States and made it to Austria where it could be approved, Allina was the only guy who could have made that happen.”

5) Allina left Pez in 1979 to join New Jersey-based Au’Some Candies, maker of candy jewelry, Mega Baby Dips and the baldly derivative Wildlife Klik dispensers. (Though a portion of the proceeds from Wildlife Klik candy sales goes to the Wildlife Conservation Society. So that’s good.)

Via /Film comes this grindhouse-style “trailer” for The Lorax. The joke establishes itself fairly quickly, but it’s still worth a look.

“Tea partiers” are planning a “National Day of Strike” on January 20th to celebrate the first anniversary of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. The “strike” is a boycott of those businesses which support the “socialist agenda” of the Democratic party, says organizer Allen Hardage, who added that the idea for the boycott came during a meeting of “Tea Party leaders” who were “frustrated that, despite a huge turn out over the last year, Congress is ignoring them, and most of the main stream media is biased in their mocking and marginalizing them.” Sounds good! I just wonder who’s gonna do the important work of showing up at town halls and ranting about death panels and comparing the President to Hitler while everyone else is busy striking.

It’s really cold!

Good news, smokers: You are no longer the group whose disgusting habits put you at the most risk of disease and death! Nope, you’ve been overtaken by the fatties, whose potato-skin-guzzling ways “now cause as much or more disease than tobacco, and do as much or more to shorten healthy lifespans,” according to researchers. So maybe it’s time to amp up your smoking a bit: It’ll keep you thin, which basically means it’s totally healthy!

I know nastiness is SO 2009 because 2010 is going to be deep-fried rainbows in effusive sauce but I can’t help but be anything besides pshaw at the news that New York City’s vintage stores are going out of business. Hey, it’s not like I don’t enjoy other people’s underwear, bias-cut velvet shit, and keen little heels in a women’s size 4 AA but um, hi, as far as business models go, I just don’t see the appeal of buying pre-owned crap at extortionate prices just because there’s a hangtag that says all eight of the shearling vests are from the ’70s. I mean, seriously, why so expensive?

I get that they “used to cater to fashion houses that need extensive inspirational period archivesblablabla” but if you’re gonna put all your eggs in that fickle-ass basket then maybe you don’t get to be allowed to be so shocked?

GAH. I feel conflicted. I love small business owners and I actually love the idea of vintage clothing but I don’t get when they pretend that the Internet doesn’t exist, or that other customers have never been to the whole rest of the country where you can rummage around and buy the same dang belt for a buck-and-a-half. I also don’t like when they pretend that I’m not deathly afraid of bedbugs and that I have sufficient space in my freezer to store every article of secondhand clothing for the requisite 3 months that it takes for all its passengers to die. And by “die”, I mean sleep because I ALSO hate when they pretend like I don’t know that New York City bedbugs and spores are really diesel and will just be extra well-rested, powerful and PISSED when they wake up to kill me slowly.

In short, I’m kinda thinking 2010 will maybe be a suck and until I get over 2009 I want all my clothes hermetically sealed in clamshells.