The popular website began life as a blog in NY started by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers.
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Gawker.com will close next week after nearly 14 years of operation, the company announced on its website today.
The post said plans for future coverage and the Gawker.com site’s archives hadn’t yet been finalised.
While fans of Gawker.com are mourning the website following the news it’s being shuttered next week, Hulk Hogan is celebrating.
This means Hogan likely got even more than he aimed for when he began his lawsuit against the company.
The company was driven into bankruptcy in June after losing an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit to Hulk Hogan. The site has steered away from media and celebrity gossip and focused on political stories. It also said it will continue to run six of the sites that Gawker published. “Most executives and venture capitalists are accustomed to dealing with acquiescent trade journalists and a dazzled mainstream media”, he said, adding that Silicon Valley figures “do not have the sophistication, and the thicker skins, of public figures in other older power centers such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C”.
Former writers for Gawker took to Twitter to express their discontent, defending the publishing of revenge porn and other defamatory pieces for which Gawker had become renown for.
It mixed irreverent posts with serious journalism.
Gawker’s ultimate undoing came when Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, sued the publication for posting a tape showing him having sex with a friend’s wife. In 2007, Gawker.com published an article where they say that Thiel was gay.
Gawker maintained it had a 1st Amendment right to present the tape excerpt on the Web because Bollea had publicly discussed his sex life in the past, making it a “matter of public concern”.
After the case ended with a decision in Hogan’s favor, Gawker Media claimed between $50 million and $100 million in assets, and between $100 million and $500 million in liabilities, as we’ve reported.
But the site also drew fire for stories that invaded others’ privacy.
Denton responded by recalling a list of valuable news broken by Gawker over the years, including Hillary Clinton’s secret email account, Bill Cosby’s history of abusing women and the mayor of Toronto as a crack addict.
Gizmodo and gaming site Kotaku showed significant growth year-over-year in July. “What Gawker has is a financial problem, not an audience problem”. “I am proud of what we have achieved at Gawker Media Group, both in our work and our business, never more so than in these last few months”, Denton wrote.
A judge in Manhattan will rule on the sale at a hearing on Thursday.
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