Like a real-time Consumer Reports, Gawker Media’s The Consumerist strives to serve consumers who rally under the site’s fedora-and-trench-coat-clad symbol, reminding big corporations that “shoppers bite back,” as the site proudly proclaims in its sub-title.

The blog, formed in February 2005, is run by Joel Johnson, a former editor at Gizmodo, which is also owned by Gawker Media. Ben Popken, the current editor, found his new job through what seems to be increasingly common in the blogosphere: he posted a comment.

Using his blog, The Spunker, which Popken wrote for an advertising company, he mocked the ads for The Consumerist, which featured a shadowy, trench coat figure straight out of a ‘50s noir poster. He described the mascot as looking like “a gay, Jewish private investigator” and a “supernatural pedophile.”

Johnson’s mother discovered Popken’s blog, informed her son, and Johnson commented on Popken’s blog. Popken continued critiquing The Consumerist and let Johnson know. It just so happened at the same time Johnson was looking for his replacement. A few weeks later, Popken met Johnson for drinks. He now works under the same mascot he once mercilessly made jokes about.

Since then, Popken hired an associate editor, Meghann Marco, to produce 12 posts a day, as well as a weekend editor, Carey Greenberg-Berger. Popken admits that The Spunker’s style was influenced by Gawker’s old standard of “the jokey headline, the quote, the kicker,” and understands why Johnson would see his blog and think the writing would work.

“I’m aware that the Gawker Media blogs are getting less ‘Gawker,’” Popken says. “We’re actually taking cues from the more established media. And instead of writing a jokey headline, why don’t we write a descriptive headline so people know what they’re reading after the headline?”

Popken, who has no formal journalism background aside from a college radio show, has comfortably settled into the role of a watchdog, setting up dual monitors in order to increase his productivity and respond faster to incoming tips and instant messages.

Blogs are starting to become more of mainstream media, according to Popken, but they’re not there yet. “On the Internet, people can form new social groups that share information at mind-bogglingly rapid pace — much faster than companies can react.”