Meet the editors of Valleywag.

Never in the last decade has there been more workplace gossip to leak than now. But-for the same economic reasons-everybody's more paranoid than ever that the boss' IT agents are snooping. Some Gawker tipsters are reluctant to send email from work computers. So we're opening a telephone tipline. Dial *67 to obscure the caller ID and then 646-214-8138 646-470-GAWK (646-470-4295) (this phone number changed in April, 2011) to leave Gawker's editors a voicemail. For the rules, read on.

Gawker has had a reasonably friendly rivalry with Bruce Wasserstein's New York magazine. At least three former editors of this site—Elizabeth Spiers, Jesse Oxfeld and Jessica Coen—have found refuge there after their sentence in the blogging mines. This history makes the latest audience numbers from Compete.com particularly satisfying. In September, gawker.com alone—not including any sibling sites—drew level with New York's nymag.com.

The Valley has a peculiar lens on the market meltdown. For an outside perspective, check out the Consumerist's Wall Street meltdown microsite. The site wraps together coverage from several blogs published by Gawker Media — including Valleywag's own contributions.

The publication of a relatively juicy interview with Jennifer Lopez—rejected by an unnamed fashion magazine—reminds us that magazine articles are often dropped not because they're bad but because they're good. Or—more often—simply because they've been overtaken by events or clash with some other article or because an insecure editor has over-commissioned. (Tina Brown, who published Kevin Sessums' J-Lo profile on her new Daily Beast website, was notorious for assigning three times the articles she ran.) Anyway, here's an alternative for journalists who've spent weeks slaving on an article only to see it spiked: Gawker's unspiked files.

Hello layabout, TV-watching young people! Gawker is looking for a television-obsessed intern to sit around and watch TV to find newsworthy clips for social commentary. The job requires a good eye and the ability to sit. The schedule is flexible but requires a minimum of 15 hours a week over the course of 3 months. College internship credit available to those who qualify. Pay is less than minimal. Email Richard Blakeley at tvinternship@gawker.com with proof of addiction to television; no attachments please. Must be able to work from our NYC based office.

Even before he worked at Valleywag, Nicholas Carlson had taken "Alleywag" as his commenter name. I always saw that passion for the site shining through his posts. True, he sometimes exhibited the inevitable traits of his hard-to-manage millennial generation, but he's unique — unique, I tell you! — among the precious snowflakes of his generation in being able to look at his peers' self-involvement with a wry glance. He covered the beat of online advertising adeptly, and made lists smart. What Here's what I think were some of his best pieces. Name your favorite Alleywagiana in the comments. Like me, you can keep following my favorite Gen Y-er on Tumblr. Natch.

Go ahead, call Melissa Gira Grant a "hooker." From the first, she hooked Valleywag readers with her provocative insights into how sex, money, and technology collided. We first hired her to write a column on the sex trade, and she became a sought-after expert when the Eliot Spitzer-Ashley Dupré scandal exploded on the Web. But her talents soon overflowed the confines of that narrow subject. What's next for Melissa? She's in the market for a programmer for her sex-map startup, Boffery, and she'll continue writing at melissagira.com.

Though he only joined Valleywag in March, Jackson West made a lasting impression with his sharp wit, good humor, and wicked visual imagination. As fluent in Photoshop as he is in Foucault, our token communard laced his posts with insights into the inner workings of the Web. Listed below are my favorite pieces by Jackson. Leave your own in the comments — and keep following him at jacksonwest.com.

We've introduced a couple of new features to Gawker comments. (1.) If you're checking for the latest discussions to be started on any post, just click the Newest first link. You'll see the discussion threads in reverse chronological order. Like this. Just refresh the page to see new discussions as they pop up rather than having to page through to the end of a chronological list. (2.) If you're coming to a post for the first time, try viewing by Most active first. That way you'll see just those comments that have elicited the most replies. Like this. We're going to make use of the two new features during this evening's first presidential debate which will be liveblogged here from 8.30 ET.

Saner heads have prevailed, and we've bowed to the wisdom of the crowds who populate our comments: Valleywag will retain its new thread features, announced yesterday, but we'll display comment threads in chronological order, oldest to newest.

After reading your feedback about our new commenting format that went live yesterday, our able tech crew has made some changes. Hopefully they will make the new system more user-friendly. Essentially, the comments will once again be displayed in their old chronological order. Replies to comments will be collapsed, but still in chronological order. Read about the new changes here.

Though we at Gawker Media (and here on Gawker, in this case) love our comments and commenters (well, not always), we've decided we need to shake the format up a little bit, allow for more conversation than simple one line posting. To that end, today we're introducing an entirely new commenting structure: threading! Threading is a way to make comments read more like conversations instead of a bunch of disconnected single replies. When a comment is replied to by other commenters, all the replies will appear directly below the original comment. Each of these blocks is called a "thread". All of this will be self-explanatory once you start using the new system, but read on for a more detailed explainer. Some Potential FAQs! So, um, how does this all work? Well...

THE GAWKER MEDIA OFFICE, NEW YORK — The rows of sleekly designed desks to my left are suspiciously quiet. The technical corps of our publisher, Gawker Media, is feverishly working on an update to our comments. And I'm here to witness it all! The big change: Related comments will be displayed together, as a "thread." And instead of being displayed oldest to newest, comments will be grouped by relative activity; the most tangled threads will get shuttled to the top. Update: We've decided to undo this change, displaying threads in chronological order, oldest to newest. The theory behind this: Threading is a way to make comments read more like conversations instead of a bunch of disconnected single replies. Participating in a thread is easy; instead of replying "@" another user, you can now join a thread by clicking the large circular "reply" arrow. And if you want to start a new thread? Just comment as usual. More details:

The deadline for applications is this Friday. The job spec is here. (Please read it before you respond.) Email me if you're interested.

The week of Labor Day is as good a time as any for a change: we're inviting applications for the post of Managing Editor of Gawker.com. The last eight months have been both exhausting and invigorating. I couldn't have asked for better stories—or a stronger team of up-and-coming writers. But I need to get back to my other job.

Before Pownce, before Twitter, before AIM, there was a simpler way to communicate: email. Amazingly, hundreds of millions of people still use it! Valleywag sends a weekly email of our seven most popular stories to subscribers. Are you one of them? If not, sign up here. Detailed instructions are available for the perplexed.

Hey we have a fun new tool to discourage shitty comments. It's called Disemvoweling (I'm told it's been used on other websites) and you can see an example of it here. The first Disemvoweling is a warning, the second time you're dead. BE CAREFUL.

Our new design is a modest tweak, which should have little effect on your reading enjoyment: Top stories are now featured prominently at the top of every page. We welcome your thoughts in the comments.

A reminder: if you have a particularly awesome clip or photo, you can share in the bounty. At our discretion, we'll offer $5.00 for every thousand views, with payment made to the charity or liquor store of your choice. One recent beneficiary of this pay-per-view scheme is Young Manhattanite's Andrew Krucoff, who dug out that audio last week of a young and drunk Larry King. The former Gawker mascot made $175, which he's donating to the CNN host's cardiac foundation. Send clips in to the usual place, tips@gawker.com.