Websites like Gawker are often accused of publishing tawdry and sensationalistic material as clickbait. But, while it’s undeniable that on the internet a site lives and dies by how many eyeballs it can attract, tabloid journalism has more complicated roots than the simple pursuit of viral content. Consider the article that Gawker published yesterday and—after it was roundly and quickly condemned—removed today about a media executive who, the website alleged, tried to purchase the services of a male escort for a Chicago rendezvous earlier this month. The article was a massive invasion of privacy in no small part because the executive is married to a woman, giving the article the extra edge of an outing.

On Twitter, the muckraking journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote, “I'm a fan of Gawker & several of its journalists, but that article is reprehensible beyond belief: it's deranged to publish that.”



On moral grounds, it’s hard to argue with Greenwald. Outing is a morally dubious activity, unless the person being forced out of the closet is a public figure who supports homophobic polices (in which case, the factor of hypocrisy makes the story newsworthy). The Gawker story had no such journalistic value.

Where Greenwald goes wrong is to use the word “deranged.” This implies this article was published in a burst of inexplicable insanity. In fact, the article is in keeping with Gawker’s editorial policy and reflects the sensibility of the site. There’s every reason to think that Gawker published the story because it reflects who they are as a site, and not just as clickbait.

In a 2013 column, the late New York Times media critic David Carr took note of Gawker’s habit of outing gays. He rightly described it as based in old-fashioned morality. Carr asked Gawker founder Nick Denton, who is openly gay, why he doesn’t let other people choose to come out of the closet at their own pace, as Denton himself did. “You could argue that my own history and my experience of untold truths has made me impatient, but what I care about is lies and exposing them,” Denton said.