Brett Farve’s penis was certainly a big deal, so to speak. But Manti Te'o’s imaginary/made up dead girlfriend has thrust Gawker Media's Deadspin into the spotlight like never before. As of noon Friday, the bombshell about the Notre Dame star’s lover who never was has accounted for 3.7 million visits, over 2 million uniques, and a spectacular number of media impressions, as Deadspin has been referenced and praised across the globe.

Web journalism has been vibrant for many years, so it’s dangerous to assign too much significance to the Gawker scoop. But the impressive, digital-savvy investigative reporting by the Deadspin spaff has forced many an old-school journalist to grudgingly give some credit. And it’s also exposed Deadspin to a massive new audience that it has a shot to keep. Bottom line, the piece is yet another milestone in online journalism.

Other big scoops have put

publications on the map while thrusting the medium forward. Here are some of the best:

Gawker's One Night Stand
Back in 2010, when confirmed non-witch Christine O’Donnell was running for Senate in Delaware, Gawker ran with a memorable, much-trafficked and much criticized story, "I Had a One-Night Stand With Christine O’Donnell," complete with photos of the Tea Partier in a ladybug costume. It’s hard to imagine a magazine like The Economist running with this one

HuffPo Catches Candid Obama
During the heat of the historic 2008 presidential election, candidate Barack Obama was riding high in the polls but was dogged by questions about his commitment to capitalism, his faith, and his potential for elitism. Then, during a fundraising speech in San Francisco that was generally off-limits to reporters, the then-3-year-old Huffington Post caught Obama speaking frankly about how Pennsylvanians "cling to guns or...(Read more)