Gawker Media sought bankruptcy in June after the judgment in an invasion of privacy lawsuit over its publishing of excerpts from a sex tape involving Hogan.
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Technically, Univision has until September to decide if it wants the Gawker namesake website, but as it was at the center of the lawsuits, it clearly has already made that decision. But it also eliminates Gawker.com’s massive traffic, sometimes as much as 15 million unique visitors a month, which is what attracted Univision to it and its related sites in the first place.
Gawker.com started as a site focused on NY media gossip and then evolved to politics with the upcoming elections. Gawker staffers will be reassigned, either at one of its sister sites or at parent company Univision.
Nick Denton will stick around for another two years with an annual salary of $200,000, but only as a consultant and under the requisition of fulfilling a non-compete clause. “But Gawker proper was really the only one of the sites without a strong endemic ad proposition”. A Florida jury in March said Gawker violated the wrestler’s privacy when it published parts of a video showing him having sex with the wife of a friend at the time.
Following the judgement, Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy, and now television network Univision is buying the company’s assets for $US135 million ($175 million).
It advertised itself as “the source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip”.
Before the announcement, several Gawker editors expressed excitement at the sale but also challenged Univision’s chief news and entertainment officer to remain faithful to fearless journalism.
It was subsequently revealed that Bollea launched the lawsuit with financial backing from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who pursued a vendetta against Gawker for revealing he was gay back in 2007. Gawker is expected to continue appealing that legal loss. Many experts though expect that the original verdict will be overturned on appeal. Currently, both sides are reportedly engaged in settlements talks.
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“Sadly, neither I nor Gawker.com, the buccaneering flagship of the group I built with my colleagues, are coming along for this next stage”, Denton said in a farewell message to employees posted online.
