A Florida jury awarded Hogan $140.1 million in damages earlier this year, which motivated both Gawker Media and Denton to file for bankruptcy this summer.
Advertisement
After almost fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week…
The website Gawker, which spent the last 14 years lowering the bar for sleaze and rumor-mongering online, will close next week if a bankruptcy judge approves the sale of media mogul Nick Denton’s nine websites to Univision. The announcement comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, four months after declaring bankruptcy.
Nick Denton told his staff on Thursday that Gawker.com will shut down. Gawker Media claimed they were entitled to publish the footage under the first amendment, but lost.
Somewhere Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Rob Ford, Manti Teo, Tim Cook, Michael Brutsch, Greg Hardy and are toasting to the news earlier today that Gawker is shutting down. Gawker has created their fair share of enemies over there, including Thiel, who the site outed a few years ago, which may have been a reason why he financially backed the Hulkster. “I can understand the caution”.
As you may have heard-and as we here at The A.V. Club know very well, considering we were one of them-Latin American media company Univision has been on a mission to increase its English-language presence by buying up various English-language media outlets.
Gawker Media, which includes such sites as Gizmodo and io9, went into bankruptcy protection following Hogan and Thiel’s lawsuit and the multi-million dollar judgment.
It’s unclear what fate awaits Gawker.com’s voluminous archives. Univision beat out Ziff Davis, the only other participant in the auction, a person familiar with the matter said. Gawker had published a video of Hogan having sex with a friend’s wife.
The Gawker case gained additional notoriety when it was revealed Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel had secretly bankrolled Hogan’s lawsuit. In the end, Univision prevailed in an auction of Gawker’s assets.
Advertisement
Gawker’s writers were originally anxious about the future of Gawker.com after Univision made it known that they had a place under their conglomeration for Kotaku, Gizmodo, Jezebel and Jalopnik but made no mention of Gawker.com.
