![]() ![]() So ended the saga of sex, money and revenge that bankrupted Gawker Media and its founder after Hulk Hogan, bankrolled by billionaire- vampire Peter Thiel, won a $140m lawsuit against Denton and his company this summer in Florida court. Meanwhile, the death of Denton’s flagship got one line in the memo: “UCI will not be operating the site.” Next, it’s a matter of audience: “The addition of Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, and Kotaku to FMG will help us to continue to serve young, polycultural influencers with digital-first brands that reflect their passions with an authentic voice.” The staff memo also said that Univision was interested in “growing video operations and expanding branded entertainment efforts”. ![]() “With this strategic acquisition of digital assets, FMG’s digital reach is expected rise to nearly 75 million uniques, or 96 million uniques when including the extended reach network of partner sites – making it a leading digital publisher with a digital reach larger than Buzzfeed (77m), Vice (59m) and Vox (59m), according to comScore.” It may again be up to Gawker to find out where the lines are currently drawn.Univision hyped the acquisition to staff on Thursday in a memo, obtained by the Guardian, from chief news, entertainment & digital officer Isaac Lee.įirst and foremost, the company touted the move as a traffic grab, or “expanding” its “digital footprint”. The verdict was widely interpreted as a perceptible shift in how the public and juries view privacy rights.įive years on, freedom of speech is, if anything, more contentious. ![]() And jurors sided with Hogan, who shed tears in the courtroom when the verdict came down. Gawker’s original travails began when it refused to take down a 2006 sex tape of Hogan, real name Terry Bollea, with the wife of his best friend, Bubba the Love Sponge Clem. Bustle has already attempted a Gawker reboot, only to see it collapse before launching after problematic tweets by its editorial director were dug up. The problems independent journalism sites face under ownership of venture capitalists are well-known. But he knows how to build traffic using content that we all hate.” “Goldberg is an opportunist who thought he could buy an asset on the cheap, plus the archives, and get all the sparkle, branding and name-recognition to build a large-traffic site to go with his group – and all of which is antithetical to what Gawker stood for. “There’s no way to capture the old anarchic spirit under the control of venture capitalists. ![]() “Anyone who cares about Gawker thinks it’s a terrible idea,” said one. While praising Finnegan as a journalistic talent, a former Gawker staffer said many from the old era are unconvinced by its relaunch. “Some great advice I once got was ‘Be less yourself.’ I was 27, and going through a righteous phase that unfortunately coincided with having a national platform on which to write. Finnegan subsequently edited the Outline before it too was sold to Bustle.Īmong her best-known columns, under the heading ‘Unconventional Wisdom: challenging those faux-profound bits of knowledge so often taken for granted’, she reflected on an earlier post in which she had described her boss hitting his head on a lamp during a meeting. Thiel’s crusade against Gawker started after the Gawker-owned tech blog Valleywag, published a post that had outed him as gay.īustle has said the new editor of Gawker will be Leah Finnegan, who had worked at Gawker for a year as a writer and features editor before she took a buyout in July 2015. Sources close to Gawker told the Guardian that Peter Thiel, the German American billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist, who had funded Hogan’s libel suit over a sex tape Gawker had posted online, had also looked to buy the company, with a view to preventing the site and its archive from ever returning to the public domain. The company behind the rebirth is Bustle Digital Group, a company known as a clearing house for a dozen publishing sites, among them Bustle itself, Romper, Nylon and W, which purchased Gawker for $1.35m at a bankruptcy auction in 2018.īustle is the brainchild of Bryan Goldberg, described by the New York Post as “a scruffy, 35-year-old media mogul”. But Gawker’s original purpose as an independent publishing meteor could be tough to replicate. ![]()
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