Recently, Gawker’s head man, Nick Denton sent a memo to his teams outlining a new bonus system. Previously (until early last year when bonuses were suspended), editors of Gawker’s numerous blogs could expect an additional chunk of cash for page views above a certain number, in a given time period. But with this new policy, editors will now get those same extra pennies for netting a number of unique visitors that eclipses a certain benchmark – that benchmark being the average number of US unique visitors by month over the past 12 months.

This sounds like an example of what has happened to “blogs” since they really started to explode a handful of years back. Naturally, unless you’re pounding out the keys in your adult footie pajamas, existing on a steady diet of Cheerio-O’s and HTML in your parents basement, in order to operate a blog full time, you need advertiser support. Or to get bought out, but in either case, what was once done as a matter of passion, has become big business.

Anyways, Denton claims the new bonus system will incentivize Gawker editors to produce more original reporting. And he’s got a point. Really, an emphasis on unique visitors IS an emphasis on pageviews, since each visitor counts for at least one pageview, and potentially more if they decide to poke around or come back another time and again like what they see. So while 10 posts on USC football, for example might only interest the same 5,000 people (I’m sure the number is more than that, I’m just throwing something out there, though), 10 posts covering a number of different topics, in different ways, has the potential to interest that many more new readers.

That aside, I hope this doesn’t “incentivize” Gawkers editors to ignore their already faithful readers. Certainly as we’ve said here several times this week, content is king. But blogging shouldn’t just be about how many new users you can “recruit” by being “more of a hustler,” it should also be about maintaining and nurturing a community. You absolutely want to be attracting new readers as often as possible, but not at the expense of those who consume your blog’s posts and participate in the related discussion regularly. You want quantity AND quality. But when you begin to place the emphasis on “stories that have the potential to break out on Twitter, Facebook or in TV coverage,” are you really worried about quality anymore?

It certainly seems like Gawker is now more focused on advertisers and outside media than it is on its own targets – the readers. And while this may be the wisest strategy from a financial perspective, I wonder how wise it is from a business perspective? There may be no change in the type and style of content Gawkers’ site editors produce. After all, there will always be some existing readership that should keep things in check. And writers generally have a certain style that draws readers in, and in theory should continually retain readership. But when you start caring more about short term growth (new users that may or may not ever come back), perhaps you’re ignoring the potential harm it could do to maintaining a vibrant community, which will always produce solid numbers your advertisers can take to the bank.