Top Stories: Will Actors Strike? SAG’s Crowded House ‘Twilight’ Sequel Switch NBC Exec Bloodbath Paramount Drops Producers DreamWorks Funding Woes Big Media Stiffs WGA Lousy IATSE/AMPTP Deal? The Real ‘Mad Men’            Top Stories: Will Actors Strike? SAG’s Crowded House ‘Twilight’ Sequel Switch NBC Exec Bloodbath Paramount Drops Producers DreamWorks Funding Woes Big Media Stiffs WGA Lousy IATSE/AMPTP Deal? The Real ‘Mad Men’            Top Stories: Will Actors Strike? SAG’s Crowded House ‘Twilight’ Sequel Switch NBC Exec Bloodbath Paramount Drops Producers DreamWorks Funding Woes Big Media Stiffs WGA Lousy IATSE/AMPTP Deal? The Real ‘Mad Men’            Top Stories: Will Actors Strike? SAG’s Crowded House ‘Twilight’ Sequel Switch NBC Exec Bloodbath Paramount Drops Producers DreamWorks Funding Woes Big Media Stiffs WGA Lousy IATSE/AMPTP Deal? The Real ‘Mad Men’            Top Stories: Will Actors Strike? SAG’s Crowded House ‘Twilight’ Sequel Switch NBC Exec Bloodbath Paramount Drops Producers DreamWorks Funding Woes Big Media Stiffs WGA Lousy IATSE/AMPTP Deal? The Real ‘Mad Men’            Top Stories: Will Actors Strike? SAG’s Crowded House ‘Twilight’ Sequel Switch NBC Exec Bloodbath Paramount Drops Producers DreamWorks Funding Woes Big Media Stiffs WGA Lousy IATSE/AMPTP Deal? The Real ‘Mad Men’           

Another One Bites The Dust At Defamer

More changes inside Nick Denton's Gawker Media internet empire. With regard to showbiz, Mark Graham steps down as Defamer's Managing Editor after being in that gig only since January. The new guy to suck up to is Seth Abramovitch, a Defamer veteran since the good ol' days when the very funny Mark Lisanti was in charge. I'd love to see the site get back to its humorous roots. 

« U.S. House Approves Financial Bailout: Movie And TV Employers To Get A Cut   WGA vs Tyler Perry Productions, Contd »

12 Comments »

  1. Agree 100% When Lisanti left Defamer it became worthless. Nothing new, nothing funny. Hope Abromovitch will bring some much needed humor and maybe some actual insider knowledge!

    Comment by JWCM — October 3, 2008 @ 5:41 pm

  2. I agree completely. Defamer used to be a hub of seriously sharp wit with a very critical and humorous eye on Hollywood. Since Lisanti’s departure it’s lost something. And while it still tries to be funny, it hasn’t made me laugh out loud in quite a while.

    Comment by Voodoo — October 3, 2008 @ 5:55 pm

  3. Defamer is like a very poor man’s AV Club. I only read it because I have nothing better to do.

    Comment by Marty Bomb — October 3, 2008 @ 7:25 pm

  4. ah so is mark the reason defamer has been so cringe-worthy this year?

    is he the one to blame for the unfunny-at-birth “a call to the bullpen”? was he the one who decided to take the formerly useful and interesting to-do list and turn it into another excruciating exercise in internet look-at-me-ism by having it delivered on camera? and then there’s the overall TMZ-ish slant the site has taken. some of us look to defamer as an oasis from the parched blandness of celebrity blogs and people pointing their webcams at themselves… what a horrible bandwagon to join.

    seth, whose entries are consistently sparkling and witty, has the power to save this ship. i wish him well.

    Comment by once-loyal reader — October 3, 2008 @ 7:57 pm

  5. I love “A Call To The Bullpen”— It is one of my
    favorite features. So silly it is that it makes me
    sometimes bust out and laugh.

    I also love “Privacy Watch.” I don’t miss Mark Lisanti- he deserved to be fired. How soon we forget that at the end of Mark’s run his copy was light and boring and the whole Defamer aura was lost somewhat.
    In the end Mark was all about promoting Mark and scoring deals for Mark and Defamer sputtered.

    Comment by FanofTheBullpen — October 3, 2008 @ 8:33 pm

  6. Defamer was a good read in its fledgling days, but it seemed that Mark Lisanti guy annoyingly became more and more enamored with his wit. This was evident from his posts becoming increasingly long-winded and their employing arcane info along with a demonstration of his prodigious vocabulary, essentially appropriating the shtick of has-been “comedian” Dennis Miller.

    I stopped reading back in 2006 or so. I wonder whatever became of that Lisanti guy. Did he ever sign with CAA, UTA, or Endeavor? Although he always ridiculed them, you could read between the lines of his snarky posts, which yelled “please rescue me from blogosphere hell and its evil overlord Nick Denton! I’m a brilliant writer, sign me, pleeeeeese!”

    Comment by P — October 3, 2008 @ 9:07 pm

  7. You punks should grow a pair. Once again, Nikki is 100% dead on. Lisanti was the only thing that made Defamer funny. Those that mock Mark sound more than just a little jealous to me. Jilted lovers… Or scooped– made to look like idiots– Hollywood insiders? You make the call!

    Comment by MrGrowAPair — October 4, 2008 @ 12:59 am

  8. It slid downhill so fast because Mark Graham was editing the LA gossip site from NYC; he’s not even in LA. Duh. Lisanti was great.

    Comment by SovereignGlory — October 4, 2008 @ 8:49 am

  9. mark (lisanti) was great. mark (graham) was not. but seth has been there nearly the whole time too, and if you’d have noticed, his posts were and are fantastic.

    Comment by once-loyal reader — October 4, 2008 @ 11:57 am

  10. That site has been terribly un-user friendly the past year or so to the point that I finally stopped going there. Dreadful.

    Comment by Crystal Diane Stevens — October 4, 2008 @ 2:22 pm

  11. I stopped going there, too. I didn’t tie it to the departure of Mark Lisanti until now.

    Now I go to Jezebel… it’s kind of the same, only better.

    Comment by ty — October 5, 2008 @ 12:02 am

  12. Dlisted is so much better if you want some snark with your gossip.

    They also don’t make you jump through hoops to post a comment like the mongoloids at Defamer.

    Comment by Francine Fishpaw — October 5, 2008 @ 8:32 am

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

XHTML ( You can use these tags): <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> .