Lost among the resignation of two of its top editors and a fight over whether a post on the sexual preferences of a Conde Nast executive should be purged from the company’s flagship site is just how huge the Gawker Media Network is. Based on comScore data, its combined sites had 51.3 million unique visits in May, putting it in the Top 50 among all sites in the United States. Its network includes Gawker, Deadspin, Jezebel, Zalopnik, Gizmodo and Lifehacker.

The Gawker Media Network is so huge that its unique visitors top that of the Fox News Network (52 million) and run just behind Viacom Digital (54 million). Presumably Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAB) sites include MTV, Country Music Channel, Comedy Central and another dozen properties. Fox and Viacom have tens of thousands of employees and tens of millions of dollars to spend on building, operating and promoting their online properties.

Regardless whether Gawker is partially torn apart by the fight between its editors and management, it is unlikely that the public appeal of Gawker will fall off much. That appeal, based on its audience, is too large and its original brand is over a decade old.

Worth noting is that online size does not translate into sales or profits. Gawker had modest revenue of $45 million last year and $6.7 million in profits. Its yield per unique visitor is very low.

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comScore product description:

Media Metrix Multi-Platform offers comprehensive reporting on more than 300,000 digital media entities, including their un-duplicated audience size, demographic composition, engagement, performance within key user segments and behavioral trends. All of these metrics can be compared across digital media platforms and can be used to understand incremental activity coming from each platform.

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