Gawker.com Sold To Bleacher Report Co-Founder Bryan Goldberg In Bankruptcy Auction (cnn.com) 52
The now-dormant news and gossip website Gawker.com was sold on Thursday to Bryan Goldberg, the founder of Bustle and co-founder of Bleacher Report. According to CNN, the site sold for less than $1.5 million. From the report: Goldberg founded the sports website Bleacher Report along with three other people in 2005; in 2012, they sold it to Turner, which like CNN is owned by AT&T. He launched Bustle, a website focused on women's issues, in 2013. Goldberg addressed the Gawker sale in a Bustle internal email on Thursday, saying the site will be acquired "under a new holding company, separate from Bustle."
"You are probably wondering what happens next," he said in the email, which was obtained by CNN. "The short is this -- not much. We have no immediate plans to re-launch Gawker. For now, things will stay as they are. I'm very excited about the possibilities for the future of Gawker. I will share more in the months ahead." The sale includes an archive of hundreds of thousands of Gawker stories and social media accounts affiliated with the site. Gawker Media was sold to Univision in 2016 for $135 million and renamed Gizmodo Media Group after the company declared bankruptcy, "the result of a legal assault waged by the former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan that was secretly subsidized by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, a longtime Gawker adversary," reports CNN.
"You are probably wondering what happens next," he said in the email, which was obtained by CNN. "The short is this -- not much. We have no immediate plans to re-launch Gawker. For now, things will stay as they are. I'm very excited about the possibilities for the future of Gawker. I will share more in the months ahead." The sale includes an archive of hundreds of thousands of Gawker stories and social media accounts affiliated with the site. Gawker Media was sold to Univision in 2016 for $135 million and renamed Gizmodo Media Group after the company declared bankruptcy, "the result of a legal assault waged by the former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan that was secretly subsidized by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, a longtime Gawker adversary," reports CNN.
Re:Sensationalist headline as usual (Score:5, Funny)
Gawker: court order be damned people need to see stolen footage of Hulk Hogan fucking Bubba The Love Sponge's wife
Jezebel: looking at stolen nudes of Jennifer Lawrence is no different than sexual assault
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At least the right one is still in business.
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We're talking about two distinct publications here and there's nothing that says all publications owned by a particular company have to make up a Sinclair Media type hivemind.
Not what I expected (Score:2)
I figured it get bought up by a revenge-porn site.
Once more... (Score:5, Informative)
No, it was the result of Gawker publishing Hogan's sex tape against his will, then ignoring a judge who ordered them to take it down, then publishing an article gloating about how they were ignoring the judge, then - when it went to trial again - telling the court that they'd happily publish a sex tape featuring a five year old. These guys were scum and they committed legal suicide - it was not inflicted upon them by Thiel even though every single story Slashdot publishes on this subject tries to spin it this way.
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"And we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that meddling Silicon Valley billionaire!"
Re:It most definately was (Score:5, Informative)
Gawker was a shitty place for shitty people. The muck was to make click bait money and anything approaching actual journalism was likely an accident. It's almost certain they only went after Thiel due to his political leanings, not because they care about shady business. The number of their former staffers that showed up on the Shitty Media Men list [wordpress.com] says a lot about them. You might have decided to give them a pass because they appeared to espouse your beliefs, but they were horrible people who realized that they could get away with being horrible people as long as they told people like you what you wanted to hear.
Comparing Gawker to Sinclair says a lot more about you than it does Gawker. Gain some perspective and I think you'll see that nothing was lost.
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Um... that's a wordpress site (Score:2)
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Remember Upton Sinclair's Jungle? That's the kind of journalism we just lost.
Ironically, Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" was written to be a workers-rights labor-justice piece, but it was taken up by the middle class as a 'Health Code' cleanliness issue.
And let's not let go of the reality that Gawker thought they were going to make a mint crushing a 'little guy' who couldn't defeat them (Hulk Hogan) and didn't know he had a deep pockets backer. How many other victims did they have on the list to make money b
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Thiel was over in Saudi Arabia when the story about him being gay broke. Not the best place to be when you hear that news.
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Thiel was over in Saudi Arabia when the story about him being gay broke. Not the best place to be when you hear that news.
Also not the best country to put money into if you're gay. Not just self-defeating, but harmful to everyone who shares that sexual orientation.
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The left eats it's own. Always has drinkypoo.
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His partner in 'the surveillance state' Elon Musk seems to be doing alright, tho.
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It's just semi-algorithmic crapflooding. You see a pattern for a reason.
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These guys were scum...
They are scum. Most of the Gawker staff just moved over to sister sites during the restructuring. I can't read Gizmodo anymore because of it.
Just because the Gawker name is dead, doesn't mean the organization is.
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And nothing of value was bought. (Score:2, Insightful)
The various websites associated with Gawker are so terrible it is comical.
Whether it's The Root with its articles which foment racially-based hatred, or Jezebel with "relationship advice" which comes from people who should be held as in-patients in a mental health facility, the whole mess is a waste of electrons.
I suppose Gawker is good for keeping idiot SJWs busy at night, though. That may be its single redeeming feature.
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The various websites associated with Gawker are so terrible it is comical.
This.
A few used to be good for geek related news like Gizmodo and IO9 but Gizmodo quickly turned into an Apple fanboy service site and lost most of it's readership when a site redesign made it impossible to avoid that. IO9 took a while longer but eventually that was folded into Gizmodo and became irrelevant.
Redress of grievances (Score:1)