Wonkette

Wonkette is a political satire and gossip blog that details the goings-on of the political establishment in Washington, DC and the U.S. generally. It posts approximately 18 items daily, Monday through Friday, with limited weekend posting.

Taking a sarcastic tone, the site focuses heavily on humorous breaking news, rumors, and the downfall of the powerful. It also deals with serious matters of politics and policy. While liberal in outlook, the site is critical of Republicans, Democrats and Independents.

The name of the site is a play on the slang word wonk, meaning a 'zealous student of political policy'.^[1]

Wonkette was established in January 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Its founding editor was Ana Marie Cox, a former editor at suck.com. Under her tenure, Wonkette became known for its sharp, sarcastic, intelligent voice, and for its mixture of heady political discourse with repeated references to gin and anal sex.^[2]

Cox rapidly established a large reading audience and media notice for the site. The blog gained further national media attention after Cox publicized the story of Jessica Cutler aka "Washingtonienne", a former Hill staffer who blogged about her affair with a member of former Senator Mike DeWine's staff.^[3]

Cox announced her resignation as Wonkette's editor on January 5, 2006 in order to promote her book, Dog Days. After the publication of Dog Days, Cox began blogging at her personal website. The site includes biographical information about Cox as well as information about her novel but also includes her off-the-cuff blog entries, written in much the same style as she used at Wonkette.com. She occasionally contributed to Wonkette.com until she joined the staff of Time magazine to contribute a D.C. feature in the magazine and write for Time's blog.

Cox was succeeded on Wonkette by David Lat, the author of Underneath Their Robes, a blog about the federal judiciary, and Alex Pareene, a young New York University student and Gawker intern/guest editor in New York who moved to DC for the Wonkette position. (Pareene has since become the day editor of Gawker.)

In June 2006, Lat announced his decision to leave Wonkette. His slot was to be filled by guest editors until August 2006, when Gawker blogger Ken Layne, who by some accounts is a no name wannabe jounalist with limited writing skills joined as permanent guest editor. Layne became West Coast bureau editor officially before the November midterm elections. Wonkette reached its highest pre-2008 traffic during the midterm elections due to scandal coverage of Mark Foley and other incumbents involved in corruption, sex-abuse and bribery scandals.

In October 2007, Pareene announced that he would be leaving the site in order to work for Gawker Media out of New York City and Layne left the site shortly afterwards as well. John Clarke, Jr. - formerly of the New York Times and Variety - briefly took over as the site's editor mid-October, with Jim Newell, formerly of IvyGate, and Megan Carpentier, formerly the anonymous author of the "Ask a Lobbyist" column, serving as associate editors. Layne returned as Wonkette's managing editor in January 2008.

Within weeks of his return, Layne replaced associate editor Megan Carpentier with Sara K. Smith, who marked her anniversary at the site in February 2009. Newell, Smith, Layne and videographer Liz Glover covered the Denver DNC and St. Paul RNC conventions for the site. Newell and columnist Josh Fruhlinger covered Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington.

Columns by Princess Sparkle Pony and the Comics Curmudgeon are regularly featured, along with video produced by Liz Glover. Guest editors include Reason Magazine editor Nick Gillespie, Reason reporter David Weigel, Princess Sparkle Pony blogger Peter Huestis, DCeiver editor and Huffington Post writer Jason Linkins. Current interns include Juli Weiner, editor of Columbia's literary magazine The Blue and White, and Malaka Gharib, a contributor to The Washington Examiner, Al Jazeera English and Brightest Young Things.

\

The Bloggies at SXSW selected Wonkette as Best Political Blog in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Wonkette was chosen as a top political blog by Vanity Fair and Real Simple in 2008. Wonkette won the Best Liberal Blog category in the 2008 Weblog Awards and is nominated in the humor, politics and group-blog categories in the 2009 Bloggies.

• Wonkette