This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here.

Submit your questions to asklloyd@gawker.com.

What's your next step? And why didn't Mort re-up with you — what's the backstory?

I'll be in a position to tell you very soon about the next gig. As for Mr. Zuckerman, I knew when I took the job that not being re-upped was not only a possible but a likely outcome. Mort is obviously a brilliant businessman, and God bless him for keeping the New York Daily News afloat, but he is not a "media baron" in the sense that Rupert Murdoch is. I was an impulse buy. Mort, whom I've known for years, spotted me at a party and decided he wanted me. He was a very persuasive suitor. But, if I can take the analogy to its gag-inducing conclusion, he's not a constant spouse. In my relatively short time at the NYDN, I served under three editors in chief, three features managing editors, three different deputy publishers, etc. That's very high turnover at the top, in case my point isn't clear, and makes for a lot of abrupt strategic and tactical switches. In the end, with declining circulation and ad revenue — the bane of the newspaper business — Mort was looking to save money and I was a big-ticket item that could easily be dropped from the budget without too much disruption.

Why did you leave DC? When I was a lowly summer intern in the nation's capitol, I remember that you were quite "da bomb". You even dating one of the 50 Most Beautiful People. What happened?!

Yes, my life has taken a shocking turn since those halcyon days, is that your point? But so has yours! Change is good! Change is your friend — even if I'm not. Just kidding.

I am a (gossip)blogaddict from Amsterdam, English is not my native language, so please don't be too turned down by any grammar/spelling and other "awkward formulating of words" — mistakes.

I will try not to be too turned down.

I've been spending quite some time in NYC from 2002-2004 and i have good memories of buying the Daily News en the Post on the newsstands and read the gossipcolumns on my way home in the subway. So back in Amsterdam i kind of filled up this emptiness by reading the American Gossipblogs. Coming from the old media, you've witnessed the internetrevolution and the way new gossipcolumnists jump on the wagon. Do you think the influence of the old, printed media is losing it from the gossipblogs? Gossipblogging is fast, every second you get new "news" (traditional media you have to wait a week, a day, a month) and most of all: it is CHEAP (costs nothing reloading you page every 10 seconds), so that will probably attract MORE readers, not? So won't the old People Mag, Page 6, The Daily News Columns just lose their power to the Perez Hilton's, The Lainey Gossip, The Trents of Pink is the New Blog, Gawker, Defamer, the whole Nick Denton Empire?

Yes.

Using very blind items, what things did you want to print but were told not to, or used personal judgment against doing so?

I never did blind items. I just thought you either have the goods or you don't, and if you do, you might as well name your quarry. One of the great things about my job at the NYDN was that I was never ever stopped from writing what I wanted to. Of course, I sometimes, in fact rarely, heard after the fact that the owner wasn't happy with something I'd put in the column — or sometimes one of the editors would fuss at me — but nobody told me: Don't do this!

What was the worst thing, the absolutely worst worst thing, about working at the Daily News?

The dearth of places to have lunch in our charmless little neighborhood next to the train yard. I know, it sounds like a horrific situation.

— Lloyd Grove

Earlier: Ask Lloyd Grove: Scary Mofos, Schwag, and Sex with Jessica Cutler