According to the latest comScore numbers, Gawker.com and its related site network, which include the gadget guide Gizmodo and sports blog Deadspin, have posted significant growth. In December, Gawker.com’s uniques more than doubled to 1.2 million, while Gawker Media collectively grew 32 percent to 7.1 million total uniques, per comScore (NSDQ: SCOR). (In an e-mail message, Denton cites Quantcast figures that show Gawker Media’s uniques are about 14 million).

SEE ALSO: Gawker Media Claims 35 Percent Gain in Ad Revs; Pageview Bonuses Join ‘Paycheck Journalism’

Last May, despite boasting of continued healthy ad growth, Denton told AdAge he temporarily suspended the pageview bonus system in the face of the weak economy. At the time, he also argued that pageview bonuses demonstrated value for original reporting, claiming that Gawker’s breaking news gets 10 times—or, in some cases, even 100 times—the pageviews that linking to someone else’s blog post gets. Denton told paidContent that the pageview bonuses were “suspended during the financial crisis at end of 2008,
when it wasn’t at all clear we’d be inoculated against the ad downturn.”

Whether or not this switch—which Denton doesn’t consider all that radical—will produce more original work, It looks like the change could encourage more collaboration within the various Gawker sites. Under the new “unique visitors regime,” individual and site bonuses will be combined. Each site will be given a target. The initial target is simply the average US uniques of the last 12 months. If there’s an appreciable rise, the site will get a bonus, to be administered by individual editors.