This has been rumored for days, but some blogs/bloggers have been layed off from Gawker’s Portfolio of blogs.  According to Micro Persuasion:

"The New York Times is reporting that Gawker Media founder and CEO Nick Denton is putting two of his lowest performing blogs on the block, reorganizing others and laying off several people.

Sploid and Screenhead are being sold. Editors at Gawker, Wonkette, Gizmodo, and Gridskipper were moved or replaced, the Times reports. Jesse Oxfeld - one notable example - is out at Gawker.  Jessica Coen remains. Mediabistro rounds up all the personnel moves."

Even as Pageviews are up - the cost of doing business has risen faster as some of his writers are becoming more successful, according to the New York Times.

"One of the overlords of the blogosphere with 15 sites and enough buzz to arm every doorbell in the nation, Mr. Denton has watched page views at his sites double in the last year; Gawker Media and Nielsen/NetRatings put monthly unique visitors at 4.2 million. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that Mr. Denton celebrated a very upbeat stretch in the blogging industry by putting two of his sites on the block, reorganizing others and laying off several people.

"….Editors at Gawker, Wonkette, Gizmodo, and Gridskipper were moved or replaced. At a time when mainstream media companies are madly baking their own piece of blog pie, Mr. Denton was summarily executing underperformers.

Blogs really need to be updated often - like several times a day

"BRACING candor is not the only relevant application at Gawker Media. Blogs, as they became a medium unto themselves, have generally been characterized not just by idiosyncrasy, but also by a publishing schedule known only to them. Not so at Gawker Media, where the writers publish early and often, delivering on the critical expectation that readers will always find new content. "

There’s a "Blog Bubble" going on right now.

"There is no doubt that there is a bubble right now," he said.

 So why not cash out? (the NYTimes reporter asks Nick Denton)

"Because it would be too hard to start over," he said. "Sites need to be well-managed and well-designed and even then it is harder and harder to launch a site. The world does not need more blogs," adding that if you count all the pages on MySpace, "there is approximately one reader for every blog out there."

What this suggests is that the success of Gawker might not be repeatable - part of it is timing and if you were to start over now - you’d have missed the critical time to have started a blog network.  Success comes in waves -Surfers know that - you have to catch the "big one".   But the "Big Wave" does not come in all the time - maybe it comes in only once every so often.  You have to be out there to catch it - but starting from scratch with a new blog network might not make as much sense even if Nick could walk away with a lot of money in his back pocket.  Like Nick Denton said at the end of the article:

"The barrier to entry in Internet media is low," he said. "The barrier to success is high."

I would hate to think of Blog Networks having shakeouts - but it sound to me like that’s unavoidable - at some point any blog network will focus on the more profitable blogs chosing either to develop them or sell them - and it all depends and the current which one happens.