Online publishing company Gawker Media Group announced Thursday that its flagship digital property, Gawker.com, would shut down next week and end its almost 14-year run of broadcasting news and gossip.
Advertisement
Gawker.com will shut down after fourteen years of operation, the website announced on Thursday.
Denton informed staffers of the site’s fate at a meeting early Thursday afternoon at Gawker’s headquarters in Manhattan, two hours before the hearing to ratify Univision’s acquisition and a day after he confirmed that he would be leaving the company following the sale.
Gawker Media’s flagship website will be no more after the company’s assets were sold earlier this week in the wake of a sex tape lawsuit involving Hulk Hogan. “Staffers will soon be assigned to other editorial roles, either at one of the other six sites or elsewhere within Univision”, Trotter reported.
The Spanish-language television broadcaster agreed to pay 5 million for Gawker.com and its six related websites, which include Deadspin, Gizmodo and Jezebel.
In March, a USA jury ordered that wrestling star Hogan be allowed to collect $140 million in total compensation after Gawker published the videotape.
The post Gawker to shut down after almost 14 years appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
In 2012, Gawker.com published a video of Hulk Hogan having sex with the wife of a friend.
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. Gawker Media staffers unionized previous year, and the union says that Univision has agreed to recognize the existing contract.
In a sign that Gawker.com might plan to go down swinging, a post there late Thursday invited people to send tips worth pursuing. That led the company to file for bankruptcy.
Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder, was secretly financing the lawsuit that sought to shut down Gawker.com, and he made it. Gawker Media had asked for the judge to either reduce the judgment or give the company time to appeal, but the ruling was upheld and the judge denied the stay. Gawker accused him of trying to exact revenge because the site outed him as gay nearly a decade before.
Advertisement
Thiel, a major conservative donor, revealed in May that he was bankrolling Hogan’s fight against Gawker Media.
