Flagship website of Gawker Media to close in wake of crippling lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan and bankrolled by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel

Gawker.com, the flagship site of Gawker Media, will cease publication on Monday, according to a statement by Gawker Media founder Nick Denton delivered to staff on Thursday and reported by the site.



The other Gawker Media publications, including Jezebel (women’s issues), Gizmodo (tech), io9 (science fiction, fantasy and science), Kotaku (gaming), Deadspin (sports), Jalopnik (all things automotive) and Lifehacker, are expected to continue publication after Univision’s acquisition of the company. It’s been reported that Univision has agreed to keep 95% of the company’s nearly 300 employees in the United States and Hungary, to take over the leases for its office space in New York City and Budapest and to honor the recent union contract.

Univision confirmed in a statement that it would not be acquiring Gawker.com as part of the deal. Denton sent a note to staff late Thursday, indicating that he would not be part of the acquisition and would be ending his time in the “news and gossip business”. Though Gawker.com will remain an asset of the bankrupt and defunct Gawker Media organization, Denton said that the archives will remain online and held out hope for “a second act” for the site at a later date.

Gawker.com, which started publishing in December 2002 and was one of the first sites in Denton’s portfolio, was initially a media gossip and criticism site, which – under the tenure of successive editors – morphed into something broader and eventually came to include in-depth investigations, pranks, personal essays and news commentary. Its latest iteration, helmed by Alex Pareene, was focused on “political news, commentary and satire”.

But the reorientation of the site came too late for the company which, by then, was preparing for a trial in which Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea was suing for invasion of privacy over Gawker.com’s publication of video footage that depicted him having sex. Gawker Media claimed they were entitled to publish the footage under the first amendment, but lost. The jury eventually awarded Bollea $115m in the suit, and then tacked on another $25m in punitive damages against Gawker Media, $10m against Denton, and $100,000 against then-editor AJ Daulerio.

After the trial, it was revealed that the Bollea suit was brought with the financial backing of billionaire PayPal founder and prominent Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel, out of revenge for a years-old post on the Gawker Media site Valleywag, which both outed him and celebrated his sexual orientation.

Former Gawker editors and employees mourned the end of the site, and expressed concerns over the lawsuit that caused its demise.

“THEY KILLED MY BABY!!!”, wrote founding editor Elizabeth Spiers, jokingly, in a statement.



“I’m a little sad about it, though,” she said in a more serious tone. “It’s going to leave a bit of a vacuum and they did a lot of good stories that were risky.”

“It’ll also be interesting to see who does the first tough piece on Peter Thiel after this,” she added.

Gabe Snyder, who served as editor-in-chief of Gawker.com from 2008 to 2010, sounded the same warning. “This should be a frightening day to journalists everywhere,” he wrote. “There’s nothing stopping what happened to Gawker.com from happening to any other publication that can’t match the resources of a vengeful billionaire.”

Emily Gould, an occasional Guardian contributor who edited the site from 2006 to 2007, wrote: “It’s a sad outcome that sets a scary precedent.”

“Even though our breakup wasn’t amicable, I’m still grateful to Gawker for launching my career and those of so many writers I admire,” she added. “It sucks to see it end like this.”

The demise of the eponymous site had been rumored since the company filed for bankruptcy in June following the loss. At the time of the bankruptcy filing, Ziff Davis presented itself as the stalking horse bidder for the company’s assets in bankruptcy court, but pointedly did not include Gawker.com in its memo to staff about how the Gawker Media sites would fit with Ziff Davis’ current portfolio.

Univision won the auction for Gawker Media in bankruptcy court earlier this week for a reported $135m; Ziff Davis, which had said it would keep Denton on as a consultant had they been successful, dropped out “once we felt the price and terms exceeded our threshold” they told their staff.

Editorial note: the author wrote freelance or under contract for Gawker Media on its properties Wonkette, Jezebel, Jalopnik and io9 at various points from 2006 through 2010.