There has been another constant through Gawker’s history: an indiscriminate solicitation of clicks. Mr. Denton has long posted the number of page views alongside each item published on Gawker’s sites. If pride — or shame — did not provide a powerful enough incentive for writers to cater to the tastes of Internet surfers, they were paid bonuses based on how much traffic they generated.

But in recent months, Mr. Denton’s once-straightforward relationship with traffic has grown more complicated. It seems to have occurred to him that the quest for eyeballs doesn’t always produce the highest-quality content.

“A lot of our traffic last year came from stories that we weren’t ultimately proud of,” Mr. Denton said. He cited Gawker Media’s biggest traffic sensation in 2014, a video compilation of people messing up the Ice Bucket Challenge that has attracted more than 16 million views. “You’re going to get a spike from a story like that, but at the end of the year, what does it say about your brand, and are you measuring that?”