Ana Marie Cox isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers–or to say goodbye.
She quit just before she was fired from the Chronicle of Higher Education. She left the liberal monthly The American Prospect under circumstances that required her to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Now she’s swooped into Washington–here great pains are taken to keep feathers in place–as the sole writer for www.wonkette.com, a new gossip Web site.
“This is the first job I have had where my poor people skills don’t matter,” said Cox, 31. “I write and speak faster than I think, and I often get people in trouble.”
The new site is “devoted to gossip and nastiness in politics and Washington, D.C.” It is the latest offspring from the Gawker “media empire”–the people who spread the word about the Paris Hilton sex tapes (via www.fleshbot.com, an “arty” porn site) and founded www.gawker.com, a snarky, Manhattan-based must read for the media-obsessed.
While Gawker pokes fun at oh-so-hip New York, “D.C. is far more boring than it ought to be,” said Nick Denton, the publisher of Wonkette, a name that reflects the capital’s stodgy image. He favors the British press. “British papers are better,” he said. “Far less accurate, shoddy and free with the truth–but at least they are fun to read.”
Denton wanted a renegade to write for the site and found that in Cox, whom he first discovered through her former Web “blog,” anticmuse.com. “Someone with a stable, 10-year career with The Washington Post is unemployable,” he said. His goals for Wonkette: “Cause trouble, cover costs–that’s about it.”
With Cox at the helm, it’s gotten off to a promising start. The site received 55,000 page views the first day it was up on Jan. 23, four times the amount gawker.com had on its first day.
Cox, a self-described “failed journalist,” reports by surfing political blogs from the guest bedroom of her home in Arlington, Va., and by gathering information from tipsters who e-mail her with political sightings. Pounding the pavement isn’t her specialty; she prefers not to leave the house.
“[Wonkette] is a media vampire,” she said. “We can only write stuff that has already been written. We’re not trying to break news.”
Instead, she aims to twist it a bit.
“I don’t worry about being fair. I worry about being boring, about not being funny. I’m not trying to compete with Josh Marshall or any of the other serious political bloggers–I’m just trying to make fun of them.”
According to one fan of the site, the capital’s gab scene can use a fresh voice. “As a part-time consumer of gossip, I find the gossip columns [in Washington] to be stale and not very entertaining,” said Nick Confessore, an editor with Washington Monthly magazine and a friend of Cox’s.
Cox’s site is different, he said. “There are no sacred cows for Ana. She is very smart, and she has a wicked pen. She is willing to be a lot more aggressive and bitchy than most people.”
Cox says she’s hopeful of breaking “big” stories too. “I’m hoping for a Dennis Kucinich sex-tape moment,” she says, or even something salacious featuring the Bush daughters.
She pauses and reconsiders. That might be too mean, she admits.
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Edited by Lara Weber (lweber@tribune.com) and alBerto Trevino (atrevino@tribune.com)
