On a relatively slow news day, CNN’s Oliver Darcy breaks the news of zombie Gawker’s first four hires on Twitter: someone named Carson Griffith as editorial director, Ben Barna as senior editor, and Maya Kosoff and Anna Breslaw as staff writers. “He mocks himself far better than his critics ever could.” “Bryan Goldberg is not a smart man,” reads Gawker’s coverage about his decision to found a website for women. In a bankruptcy court auction, Bryan Goldberg, the founder of sports site Bleacher Report and women’s interest site Bustle, drops $1.35 million on, a website that relentlessly mocked him. Thankfully, he drops his bid in late April 2018, but no one celebrates yet. Therefore, it’s not that surprising when Peter Thiel, the very man who bankrupted Gawker, shows early interest in the corpse of the website. In early October, The Wall Street Journal reports that the bankruptcy estate is quietly shopping around to potential buyers - news that is disturbing to old Gawker writers and fans, given the new owner will have the power to delete articles from the site. October 2, 2017: Rumors circulate that might come back. (With the exception of six articles that Univision executives voted to delete from the site, ’s archive remains online.) That day, after a nearly-14-year-long run, Gawker shuts down. On a depressing Monday afternoon, Gawker founder Nick Denton publishes, “ How Things Work,” the last blog post that Gawker will ever publish. Trotter announces the upsetting news: is ending its operations. (It does.) On August 18, Gawker reporter J.K. However, part of the agreement permits Univision to exclude from its acquisition, if it so desires. Here, a look back on what the site has undergone in the past few years.Īugust 16, 2016: Univision buys Gawker Media assets for $135 million.Īfter vengeful tech billionaire Peter Thiel funds the infamous Hulk Hogan lawsuit that bankrupts Gawker Media (RIP), Univision Communications buys some of the brand’s websites, including Deadspin, Jezebel, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Jalopnik, and Kotaku. Today, it’s unclear if zombie Gawker will even come to exist: On July 30, the Post reported that the entire staff was laid off and the relaunch was postponed indefinitely. In the wake of the website’s unceremonious death in August 2016, it was sold to Bryan Goldberg, an entrepreneur The New Yorker once described as “a giant six-year-old” and which Gawker itself once called a “clueless scamp.” On January 23, just one week after (new) ’s first four employees were announced, the Daily Beast reported that the site’s only two reporters stepped down due to another staffer making offensive and wholly inappropriate comments in the workplace five months later, the site’s sole senior editor followed suit and quit just ahead of Gawker’s scheduled relaunch in fall 2019, per the New York Post. Such is the fate of New Gawker - and that’s just the beginning of the story. It would be a perfect Gawker story if it weren’t, uh, technically about Gawker: millionaire purchases a beloved website that used to mock him mercilessly after it was driven into bankruptcy by a vengeful billionaire, only to put it under the stewardship of someone with both a history of terrible tweets and the lack of foresight required to do a quick search-and-delete, leading to what seems to be total institutional chaos.
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