Tag Archives: Gawker

Vanity Fair reports: PayPal co-founder and Gawker nemesis Peter Thiel isn’t the only one eyeing the final remains of Nick Denton’s gossipy, sometimes groundbreaking media empire. Mike Cernovich, the right-wing lifestyle guru and self-proclaimed journalist, is offering $500,000 in cash for Gawker’s assets, according to a copy of the offer letter obtained by the Hive. “For the past eighteen months …

Miami’s CBS affiliate reports: Could “Hulkamania” be making its way to the U.S. Senate? If one high profile supporter of President Donald Trump has his way, that might just be the case. In an interview with GOP communications consultant Patrick Slevin on his online blog, Roger Stone – a long-time Republican consultant, lobbyist and strategist who has spent decades working …

Today is the last day of Gawker.com. From one of their goodbye posts: Gawker.com is out of business because one wealthy person maliciously set out to destroy it, spending millions of dollars in secret, and succeeded. That is the only reason. The strange and embarrassing thing about being the target of a conspiracy, an actual conspiracy, is that it undermines …

And homocon Peter Thiel gets his scalp. From Gawker: After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week. The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, and four months after the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed his clandestine legal campaign against the company. Nick …

Recode reports: Univision has won the auction for Gawker Media. The TV network and digital publisher has agreed to pay $135 million for the bankrupt blog network, according to a person familiar with the deal. Univision’s offer will encompass all seven of Gawker Media’s sites, including Gawker.com. Ziff Davis and Univision were the only two bidders for Gawker, which filed …

Today Gawker published a claim from an unnamed source that resurrects long-running speculation that Donald Trump’s erratic behavior is fueled by an addiction to prescription diet pills. From their piece: According to our source, the Donald Trump of today is on a diet drug called phentermine—and has been since at least April of 2014. Phentermine first gained notoriety in the …

Homocon Peter Thiel is probably doing cartwheels in his mansion. Via the Hollywood Reporter: Gawker Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a Florida judge issued a $140 million final judgment in favor of Hulk Hogan in the invasion-of-privacy lawsuit over the posting of a sex tape. The online news organization founded in 2003 by Nick Denton which now …

From an open letter posted yesterday by Gawker founder Nick Denton: Your revenge has been served well, cold and (until now) anonymously. You admit you have been planning the punishment of Gawker and its writers for years, and that you have so far spent $10 million to fund litigation against the company. Charles Harder, the Hollywood plaintiff’s lawyer who has …

Yesterday billionaire homocon Peter Thiel declared that he secretly funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker in retaliation for the site having outed him nearly a decade ago. Michelangelo Signorile has a problem with that. He writes: Reporting on a public figure who has been open to many people as gay, and is out in public as such, is not the …

From the New York Times: That is the back story to a legal case that had already grabbed headlines: The wrestler Hulk Hogan sued Gawker Media for invasion of privacy after it published a sex tape, and a Florida jury recently awarded the wrestler, whose real name is Terry Gene Bollea, $140 million. What the jury did not know — …

Via Mediaite: After awarding $115 million to Hulk Hogan for economic and emotional damages in his trial against Gawker, they dropped another bomb on the gossip site with just over $25 million in punitive damages on Monday. While the first amount was designated to compensate Hogan, real name Terry Bollea, for the damage Gawker caused by posting excerpts of a …

The New York Times reports: The retired wrestler Hulk Hogan was awarded $115 million in damages on Friday by a Florida jury in an invasion of privacy case against Gawker.com over its publication of a sex tape — an astounding figure that tops the $100 million he had asked for, that will probably grow before the trial concludes, and that …

Yesterday Gawker’s two top editors resigned in protest of the removal of their homophobic hit piece against a previously unknown executive. But not before one of them apparently expensed a $546 lunch on the way out the door.

Mediaite reports: Gawker Media editor-in-chief Max Read and executive editor Tommy Craggs resigned Monday in protest of the managing partners’ decision to remove a piece accusing former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s brother David of soliciting a male prostitute. “On Friday, I told my fellow managing partners… I would have to resign if they voted to remove a story I’d edited …

Via USA Today: Gawker drew heavy criticism Friday from online readers after the news and gossip site ran a story about the CFO of Conde Nast allegedly soliciting sex from a gay porn star. David Geithner, a married father of three and brother of former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, denied the allegations. Gawker nevertheless reported that Geithner planned to go …

Via Gawker: Yesterday, more than 100 Gawker Media editorial employees voted on the question of whether to be represented by the Writers Guild of America, East for the purpose of collective bargaining—that is, whether we want to form a union. The results are in. Yesterday’s votes were cast electronically and tallied by VoteNet, an independent online voting system. Out of …

An interesting claim from Gawker: In the summer of 2013, according to multiple sources with knowledge of their exchange, Shepard Smith approached Fox News president Roger Ailes about publicly coming out. The newly attached anchor was eager, at the time, to finally acknowledge his sexuality. “It’s time,” he told Ailes and other colleagues. “It’s time.” Instead, Ailes informed Smith that …

Details. (Tipped by JMG reader Gene)

David Carr writes at the New York Times: What if Gawker tried to out an anchor at Fox News and no one cared? Cue the innuendo, the salacious follow-ups and the specter of mainstream media outlets picking up the item with a pair of tweezers. Except after the post was published, there was nothing but crickets, other than a piece …