If the Church of Scientology wanted to run an ad, they’d buy an ad. But they wanted something more: they wanted some of the credibility that goes with being editorial content at the Atlantic. That’s the whole point of sponsored content or advertorials whose design mimics that of the magazine or occupies layouts that are, by design, meant to tell the reader that This Is The Magazine (or website): to pass as editorial content, or something very much like it, and thereby borrow — no, steal — some of the credibility that writers and editors have worked hard to grant that space.

On the monetization front, Webster continued to stress that scaling local takes time. "We corral hundreds of salespeople in communities," said Webster. "It takes time to win the hearts and minds -- not only of the users, the residents of these communities, but small business owners" as well.

So Patch is going from a bad version of something the journalism world desperately needs to something no one needs– more community message boards. Just kill it already and make Wall Street happy. What decade is this anyway?

This tension over photographs is only going to grow as smartphones spread and people post more pictures online. Meanwhile, social media images are becoming ever more essential to news reporting. This week, for instance, British newspapers all relied on a user’s Twitter photo to report on a London helicopter crash.

"Because we don't run any networks or remnant inventory, it's impossible for us to monetize these spikes unless we're already oversold," Gawker Media Chief Advertising Officer Andrew Gorenstein said in an email. Since Deadspin wasn't oversold, Deadspin couldn't run as many ads as it would have liked.

But Deadspin isn't alone. Web publishers have traditionally had trouble making money off of sudden surges in visits to their site. The rise of real-time bidding for ad space on exchanges can help publishers find buyers for unexpected supply, but the trade-off is often a much lower price for those ads.

"Consumers are very comfortable across [multiple] platforms; they don't silo these activities," Reis said. " We as marketers need to adapt and reshape how we talk to consumers" about these habits.

Headlines once were stuffed full of proper nouns. But it turns out, old-fashioned headlines don't convey things that aren't news well … In 2007, a popular video of a baby getting dropkicked by a breakdancer (hard to believe I just typed that) was headlined "Times Square Still Extremely Unsafe for Children" on Gawker, which is pretty so-so as a headline but still funny. There's no way that would get that headline now. ("Breakdancing in Times Square – Baby goes flying!" was the YouTube video headline.) "Watch This Baby Get Drop-Kicked By a Subway Breakdancer" is what I'd predict for our age. You have to really tell the folks on Twitter what's happening for your clicks 'n' shares, you see.

"Nobody needs to get my immediate take on everything I see online," said Atlanta printing consultant Deirdre Levinson, questioning the merits of any site that, without knowing her level of intelligence or expertise in a particular topic, would deem her worthy enough to engage in a discussion. "And they're sorely mistaken if they believe I could actually add something of value to the conversation. At best I'm just going to parrot back some loose approximation of what I've heard before, which will just prove that I never should have weighed in in the first place."