The whole fiasco between Hulk, real name Terry Bollea, and Gawker, began way back in 2012, when the website published a segment of a sex tape between Bollea and a friend’s wife.
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The development comes days after Univision agreed to buy Gawker Media, the pioneering digital news startup founded by Nick Denton, for $135 million.
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. Univision said it had no comment on the matter.Federal bankruptcy judge Stuart Bernstein said on Thursday he’ll approve the sale, under which 95 percent of Gawker Media employees will get job offers at Univision.
The suit was bankrolled by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who has said his own privacy was invaded when Gawker outed him as gay in 2007. Thiel told The New York Times that after Gawker.com had made public their opinion about his sexuality, he realized that the site had a unique and incredible damaging way of attracting its public attentions by bullying people, even where there was no connection with the public interest.
Denton responded by recalling a list of valuable news broken by Gawker over the years, including Hillary Clinton’s secret email account, Bill Cosby’s history of abusing women and the mayor of Toronto as a crack addict.
That was too much for Gawker Media to swallow and though it has begun an appeals process, it filed for bankruptcy shortly after and its assets were sold to broadcast network Univision, which has now announced the closure of Gawker.com.
“They will be joining The Onion, ClickHole and other beloved web properties in Fusion Media Group, the digital operation of Univision”.
Gawker.com will remain online, but after Monday it will not publish new material, according to a person briefed on the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been made public.
In one of its most famous scoops, Gawker reported the existence of a video in which then-Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoked crack, then launched a fundraiser – called, of course, a “Crackstarter” – to purchase it. Ford stuck out the ensuing scandal, but eventually opted not to run for re-election and died of cancer earlier this year. UCI will not be operating the Gawker.com site. Some snarky Twitter users immediately predicted a rise in office productivity with Gawker’s demise.
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In a memo to its staff, Gawker founder Nick Denton said he’s also getting out of the news business. Gawker’s an outsider that likes to rip things up.
