Gawker sought bankruptcy in June after facing a US$140 million court judgment following an invasion of privacy lawsuit from former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, over the publication of excerpts from a sex tape.
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Gawker.com is closing. In an announcement on its website this afternoon, Gawker reporter J.K. Trotter reported that the site will shut down next week after Univision’s purchase of Gawker Media.
Almost 14 years after it launched, Gawker.com will be shutting down in the fourth week of August 2016, the company announced on its web site.
Gawker Media then filed for bankruptcy and the company’s CEO and former Financial Times journalist, Nick Denton, filed for personal bankruptcy. However, while Univision is keeping the Gawker Media brand alive, along with Gawker Media websites such as Jalopnik, Jezebel, Deadspin, Kotaku, Gizmodo and Lifehacker, they will be shutting down the flagship Gawker.com website.
Gawker warned that if Hogan won the case, the decision would destroy the company, and the gloomiest predictions were proved true.
Mr Thiel funded Mr Hogan’s case saying he wanted to curb the company’s “bullying”, after the site published an article that outed Mr Thield as gay.
“I can understand the caution”, he said.
Following the verdict against Gawker, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing between 200 and 1,000 creditors with between $50 million and $100 million in assets and $100 million to $500 million in liabilities.
Univision placed the winning bid for Gawker’s assets and subsidiaries; the deal still needs to be approved by a bankruptcy judge.
It later emerged Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel had bankrolled Hogan’s lawsuit.
It’s unclear what fate awaits Gawker.com’s voluminous archives.
In 2012, Gawker.com published a video of Hulk Hogan having sex with the wife of a friend. According to the tracking site comscore, more than half of Gawker Media’s audience is under the age of 35.
This story originally appeared in The New York Post.
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Denton said Tuesday that the sale to Univision means “our employees are protected and will continue their work under new ownership – disentangled from the legal campaign against the company”. “I will support him until his final victory”, Thiel wrote in a New York Times opinion piece August 15.
