Gawker’s Nick Denton out of the ‘news and gossip business’

Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy following its costly legal battle with Hulk Hogan after it published a sex tape featuring the former wrestler. A judge must still approve the sale at a hearing Thursday.

Staffers of Gawker.com were informed by Denton on Thursday afternoon. Twitter immediately went berserk in an unholy melange of shock, sadness and Schadenfreude. Denton, who’s also CEO and principal shareholder of Gawker Media, also subsequently filed for bankruptcy protection.

The case drew heightened attention when tech billionaire Peter Thiel acknowledged that he had helped fund that and other litigation against Gawker, a company Thiel has feuded with for years since it “outed” him as gay. The court sided with Hogan, and Gawker was ordered to pay $140 million in damages.

Univision’s winning bid for Gawker Media was approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge earlier on Thursday.

“The loss of Gawker is huge & awful”, tweeted Glenn Greenwald, founder of news outlet The Intercept and the journalist who introduced the world to Edward Snowden, adding that he “still can’t believe journalists cheered Thiel”.

While I’m not exactly mourning the loss of Gawker.com, particularly since sites like Jalopnik will continue on under Univision’s umbrella, I do feel bad that some people are losing their jobs all due to the arrogance and carelessness of their boss. Gawker argued in the Hogan case that it was protected by the First Amendment. “If you want to ascribe blame, blame Denton”.

The post on Gawker’s website said plans for future coverage and its website’s archives had not yet been finalised.

Gawker Media declined to comment. The company’s portfolio of sites also includes the technology site Gizmodo; the sports site Deadspin; and Jezebel, a site aimed at women. But not so for Gawker.com. Their breezy and often confrontational style has been influential in the publishing world. And it was one of those scandals which brought it down. After being condemned for again invading privacy, Gawker removed the post.

Gawker, meanwhile, published its own shutdown notice.

Gawker never had a huge audience.

“We connect with a skeptical and media-savvy generation by giving them the real story, the version that journalists used to keep to themselves”.

“They may have always been biased, maybe a bit scandalous, but they were always 100 per cent honest”, he wrote in an email. Gawker’s an outsider that likes to rip things up.