Gawker Media's Nick Denton. | AP Photo/Steve Nesius, Pool Gawker.com to shut down next week Univision will close Gawker Media's flagship site

Gawker.com, the flagship property of Nick Denton's Gawker Media, will end operations next week, Gawker's J.K. Trotter reported Thursday.

The decision comes after Univision won an auction to acquire Gawker Media's assets earlier this week. Gawker founder Denton told staffers about the decision at a meeting Thursday afternoon. Denton will leave the company after Univision closes its acquisition.

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The acquisition agreement is expected to be approved by a bankruptcy judge later Thursday.

The shutdown of Gawker.com is not entirely surprising. During the Tuesday auction, Univision indicated that it might not be interested in acquiring Gawker.com. As a result, the terms of the proposed deal gave Univision the option to exclude Gawker.com from the list of Gawker Media assets that it is purchasing. Univision can exercise this option up to three days before the sale closes.

During the auction, Gawker's attorney Gregg Galardi made clear to Univision that Gawker wanted Univision to meet with the Gawker.com editorial staff before deciding whether to acquire Gawker.com. He suggested that Univision should not make a final decision about the site until next week.

"With respect to that one thing that we would like, and I have expressed this and I will say it on the record, we would like that put" — i.e., the option to exclude Gawker.com from the sale, if it is exercised — "not to be exercised for a period of time so that people can go meet the editorial staff so that they can understand why they may think you want to take it before you exercise that put," Galardi said, according to a transcript of the auction. "But you will always have up to three days prior to the closing to exercise that put. So we are thinking seven days or ten days after the hearing, however it works in your schedules to meet with those people. That is the important point."

Gawker.com staff had planned to make their case for keeping the website to Isaac Lee — the head of Univision's news, entertainment and digital operations — on Friday, when he is planning to visit Gawker Media's Union Square offices. But now they will not have the chance.

Univision has already made its decision — it will not acquire Gawker.com and its content, though it will acquire Gawker.com's staff of reporters and editors. Univision, which has pledged to retain at least 95 percent of Gawker Media staff, will offer the staffers positions at other properties in the Fusion Media Group — which now includes all of the other Gawker Media sites (Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik) as well as Fusion, The Onion, Clickhole, A.V. Club and The Root.

The Gawker.com site and its content, including its archives, will remain the property of the bankrupt Gawker Media company. It is unclear what will happen to it.

Gawker filed for bankruptcy earlier this year after losing a controversial privacy lawsuit from professional wrestler Hulk Hogan that was backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. The company has appealed the verdict, and many legal experts expect it to be overturned, though that would not undo the sale of the company.