Gawker
Gawker was an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers that was based in New York City and focused on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month in 2015. Founded in 2002, Gawker was the flagship blog for Denton's Gawker Media. Gawker Media also managed other blogs such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku.
Gawker had come under scrutiny for posting videos, communications and other content that violated copyrights or the privacy of its owners, or was illegally obtained. Gawker publication of a sex tape featuring Hulk Hogan led Hogan to sue the company for invasion of privacy. Hogan received financial support from billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who had been outed as gay by Gawker against his wishes. On June 10, 2016, Gawker filed for bankruptcy after being ordered to pay Hogan $140 million in damages. On August 18, 2016, Gawker Media announced that its namesake blog would be ceasing operations the following week. Its other websites were unaffected, and continued publication under Univision as the renamed Gizmodo Media Group. Founder Nick Denton created the site's final post on August 22, 2016. The Freedom of the Press Foundation independently archived the Gawker website and its articles in 2018.
On July 12, 2018, Bryan Goldberg, owner of Bustle and Elite Daily, purchased Gawker.com and its archive in a bankruptcy auction for less than $1.5 million. Gawker relaunched under the Bustle Digital Group on July 28, 2021, with Leah Finnegan as editor. On February 1, 2023, Bustle Digital Group suspended the site's operations. Finnegan tweeted that the publication was folding.
In November 2023, Gawker was acquired by Meng Ru Kuok. The Gawker digital archive was not included in this purchase, with all articles wiped from the original website and relocated to gawkerarchives.com.
History
The original Gawker (2002–2016)
Gawker was founded by journalist Nick Denton in 2002, after he left the Financial Times. It was originally edited by Elizabeth Spiers. Gawkers official launch was in December 2002. When Spiers left Gawker, she was replaced by Choire Sicha, a former art dealer. Sicha was employed in this position until August 2004, at which point he was replaced by Jessica Coen, and she became editorial director of Gawker Media. Sicha left for the New York Observer six months after his promotion.Later, in 2005, the editor position was split between two co-editors, and Coen was joined by guest editors from a variety of New York City-based blogs; Matt Haber was engaged as co-editor for several months, and Jesse Oxfeld joined for longer. In July 2006, Oxfeld's contract was not renewed, and Alex Balk was installed. Chris Mohney, formerly of Gridskipper, Gawker Media's travel blog, was hired for the newly created position of managing editor.
On September 28, 2006, Coen announced in a post on Gawker that she would be leaving the site to become deputy online editor at Vanity Fair. Balk shared responsibility for the Gawker site with co-editor Emily Gould. Associate editor Maggie Shnayerson also began writing for the site; she replaced Doree Shafrir, who left in September 2007 for the New York Observer.
In February 2007, Sicha returned from his position at the New York Observer, and replaced Mohney as the managing editor. On September 21, 2007, Gawker announced Balk's departure to edit Radar Magazines website; he was replaced by Alex Pareene of Wonkette.
The literary journal n+1 published a long piece on the history and future of Gawker, concluding that, "You could say that as Gawker Media grew, from Gawkers success, Gawker outlived the conditions for its existence".
In 2008, weekend editor Ian Spiegelman quit Gawker because Denton fired his friend Sheila McClear without cause. He made that clear in several comments on the site at the time, also denouncing what he said was its practice of hiring full-time employees as independent contractors in order to avoid paying taxes and employment benefits.
On November 12, 2008, the company announced selling the popular blog site Consumerist and the folding of Valleywag, with managing editor Owen Thomas being demoted to a columnist on Gawker, and the rest of the staff being laid off.
In December 2009, Denton was nominated for "Media Entrepreneur of the Decade" by Adweek, and Gawker was named "Blog of the Decade" by the advertising trade.
In February 2010, Denton announced that Gawker was acquiring the "people directory" site CityFile.com, and was hiring that site's editor and publisher, Remy Stern, as the new editor-in-chief of Gawker. Gabriel Snyder, who had been editor-in-chief for the previous 18 months and had greatly increased the site's readership, released a memo saying he was being let go from the job.
In December 2011, A. J. Daulerio, former editor-in-chief of Gawker Media sports site Deadspin, replaced Remy Stern as editor-in-chief at Gawker. The company replaced several other editors, contributing editors, and authors; others left. Richard Lawson went to the Atlantic Wire, a blog of the magazine, The Atlantic Monthly.
In 2012, the website changed its focus away from editorial content and toward what its new editor-in-chief A. J. Daulerio called "traffic whoring" and "SEO bomb throws". In January 2013 Daulerio reportedly asked for more responsibility over other Gawker Media properties, but after a short time was pushed out by publisher Denton. Daulerio was replaced as editor-in-chief by longtime Gawker writer John Cook.
In March 2014, Max Read became the Gawkers editor-in-chief. In April 2014, using internet slang was banned per new writing style guidelines.
In June 2015, Gawker editorial staff voted to unionize. Employees joined the Writers Guild of America. Approximately three-fourths of employees eligible to vote voted in favor of the decision. Gawker staff announced the vote on May 28, 2015.
Following the decision to delete a controversial story in July 2015, Read and Gawker Media executive editor Tommy Craggs resigned in protest. Leah Beckmann, the site's then deputy editor, took over as interim editor in chief. She was replaced in October 2015 by Alex Pareene.
On August 18, 2016, Gawker announced that it would be shutting down after Univision Communications acquired Gawker Media's six other websites. These websites continued to operate under Univision which named the unit Gizmodo Media Group in an effort to distance itself from the Gawker name. Gawker's employees were transferred to the other six websites or elsewhere in Univision. While Univision initially acquired the Gawker website when it purchased the other websites, "Univision deemed the Gawker.com brand too toxic, and transferred it back to the bankruptcy estate". The Gawker website remained online after it ceased publication.
Under Bustle Digital Group (2018–2023)
On July 12, 2018, Bryan Goldberg, owner of Bustle and Elite Daily, purchased Gawker.com in a bankruptcy auction for less than $1.5 million.On January 16, 2019, it was announced Carson Griffith, Ben Barna, Maya Kosoff and Anna Breslaw were joining the staff of the new Gawker. However, on January 23, 2019, Kosoff and Breslaw announced they were quitting the site over offensive workplace comments made by Griffith. "We're disappointed it ended this way, but we can't continue to work under someone who is antithetical to our sensibility and journalistic ethics, or for an employer who refuses to listen to the women who work for him when it's inconvenient," Kosoff and Breslaw said in a statement.
In March 2019, Dan Peres was announced as the site's editor-in-chief. However, in August 2019, Peres, Griffith and the rest of the staff tasked with relaunching the site were laid off. "We are postponing the Gawker relaunch," a BDG spokesperson said. "For now, we are focusing company resources and efforts on our most recent acquisitions, Mic, The Outline, Nylon and Inverse." Kate Storey of Esquire outlined the leading theory on the failed relaunch was that it aimed to turn Gawker into "the prestigious, journalistic gem of BDG, kept afloat by the profits of other sites like Bustle and Elite Daily", however, "the BDG board and Goldberg soon lost interest in a site that was proving difficult to staff, a lightning rod for controversy, and, ultimately, expensive to operate while not generating commensurate revenue".
In 2020, Griffith sued The Daily Beast, the site's editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman, and writer Maxwell Tani for defamation over an article about Kosoff and Breslaw's resignation over Griffith's comments. On March 24, 2021, a New York judge denied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. On May 16, 2023, a New York appeals court dismissed the lawsuit.
In April 2021, it was reported that Gawker would relaunch with former Gawker writer Leah Finnegan tapped as editor-in-chief. Finnegan has said, of the tone of the relaunched site, that " current laws of civility mean that no, it can't be exactly what it once was." The site relaunched on July 28, 2021.
On February 1, 2023, Bustle Digital Group announced that it would shut down Gawker as part of company-wide cuts.