Gawker is appealing the Hogan verdict.
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Gawker Media, the publisher behind popular websites including Gizmodo, LifeHacker, Jezebel and Gawker, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday.
In March, Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, was awarded $140.1 million by a jury in his privacy lawsuit against Gawker. Their bankruptcy filings showed that their debts amount to somewhere between $100 million and $500 million, while their assets are between $50 million and $100 million.
Ziff Davis owns media brands such as PC Magazine, IGN and AskMen, among others. Thiel later admitted that he had been working to fund lawsuits against Gawker for years, and has spent about $10 million of his own money to fund Hogan’s lawsuits. Denton previously noted a number of details, excluded from consideration by the jury in the first trial, which may come up during the appeals hearing, and which he believes will vindicate the company.
In 2012, Gawker published a video clip of Hulk Hogan having sex with the wife of his friend, radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.
A spokesman for Thiel declined to comment on Friday. It’ll certainly be inneresting to see if Nick and co. will be able to hold onto all of this cash as they try to fight paying Hogan in the appeal stage of their complicated case. “The public’s overwhelming support for Hulk Hogan in this case, and its apparent distaste for Gawker, are signs that the public – and perhaps the courts – are no longer willing to take an “anything goes” approach to newsworthiness”. Thiel has since publicly acknowledged that he’s gay, and called Gawker’s now-defunct blog Valleywag the “Silicon Valley equivalent of al-Qaeda”.
The insolvency news was followed by an announcement that Gawker had agreed to sell its seven brands to Ziff Davis publishing group.
Denton is also reportedly considering a bid from publisher Ziff Davis to buy the company for less than $100 million. Thiel told The New York Times that backing the lawsuits against Gawker was an act of philanthropy. This was due to an unprecedented legal assault financed in secret by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.
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In the press release, Gawker founder Nick Denton said, “We have been forced by this litigation to give up our longstanding independence, but our writers remain committed to telling the true stories that underpin credibility with our millions of readers”.
