Gawker.com, the flagship site of Gawker Media, will cease publication next week, according to a statement by Gawker Media founder Nick Denton delivered to staff on Thursday and reported by the site. The news follows this week’s announcement of Univision’s successful bid to buy six of Gawker Media’s websites for $135 million.
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Nick Denton informed current staffers on Thursday that he would be ending his time in the “news and gossip business” but gave hope for “a second act” for the site in the future.
NEW YORK (AP) Gawker.com, the brash New York website that broke new ground with its gossipy, no-holds-barred coverage of media, culture and politics, is shutting down after 14 years, brought low by an unhappy, but deep-pocketed, subject. Thiel had ostensibly been outed as gay by Gawker in 2007, and he has called Gawker “a singular, awful bully”.
The sale agreement submitted to the court includes a clause that allows Univision to decide to exclude Gawker.com from the deal, up to three days before the acquisition closes. Gawker Media filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June after a Florida judge upheld the verdict.
Thiel then reportedly financed Hogan’s invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker, which Hogan won in court.
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. The campaign being mounted against its editorial ethos and former writers has made it too risky.
Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, sued Gawker for $100 million for posting a video in 2012 of him having sex with his former best friend’s wife.
It comes months after the legal battle of the now notorious Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit – which involved such characters as Bubba The Love Sponge. Later on, it was discovered that Peter Thiel was financially supporting Hogan’s lawsuit against the website that called him gay in 2007.
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Univision is mainly known for its Spanish language television network in America, but in recent years has bought satirical sites The Onion and Clickhole as well as African-American news site The Root. “I will support him until his final victory”, Thiel wrote in a New York Times opinion piece August 15.
