Gawker Media

Gawker Media is a start-up blogging and news company that began an upward and international climb throughout the 2000s.

Gawker Media was founded by Nick Denton, a British journalist who, unlike many, made and kept millions of dollars from the dot-com boom of the 1990s. He sold an events company called First Friday that connected entrepreneurs and venture capitalists just before the bubble burst. At the time Gawker was officially launched in December 2002, blogging was still seen as an unprofitable hobby. Indeed, as a start-up, Gawker Media earned an early reputation for long hours and underpaid employees. But Denton’s efforts caught the attention of several big advertisers—Audi, Nike, and Absolut Vodka, to name a few—as early as the fall of 2003.

In interviews, Denton was dismissive of blogging as a serious medium while at the same time he pursued expanding Gawker Media, with niche blogs like Gizmodo (technology), Fleshbot (pornography), and Lifehacker (tips for better living). Despite Denton’s public protestations, Gawker was one of the first blogs to try to turn a profit—by openly pursuing readers—and Denton is considered a pioneer of blogging as a commercial venture. By the end of the 2000s, Gawker, lauded as “provocative” and “wildly entertaining,” was named the Blog of the Decade by Adweek in December 2009. Gizmodo, Deadspin (a Gawker Media sports blog), and Lifehacker were all finalists for the award. As Mediaite reported, Denton’s “scrappy outsiders” had built an empire on irony, page views, and unadulterated gossip.

Bollea v. Gawker

Gawker Media has also had to face controversy and legal issues due to the nature of Gawker's content. In 2013, former World Wrestling Entertainment star Hulk Hogan (whose legal name is Terry Bollea) initiated a lawsuit against the company for posting extracts, along with commentary, of an intimate tape of him with a friend's wife on the Gawker site in late 2012. Despite opposition from many staff members, Denton ordered the story removed from the site. The case, Bollea v. Gawker, continued to build over the next two years and the media began to postulate that a loss could mean the end of the company. In March 2016, the jury finally returned its verdict, holding Gawker Media liable and awarding Hogan $115 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages. Denton announced that Gawker would appeal the verdict, alleging that evidence had been withheld. Many news outlets noted that the company might still be required to pay the damages, which it could not afford, while the case was being appealed.

Costs had also increased due to the company's move to a new building and employees' decision to unionize in the summer of 2015. Though the court date was postponed in July of that year, Gawker provoked further antagonism after posting a story that accused the married chief financial officer of the media giant Condé Nast of soliciting a male escort. When readers responded negatively to the post, Gawker Media's managerial leadership voted on whether to remove it as well. While Denton and other heads of the company voted for taking it down, the editorial staff, especially those involved with the article, heavily dissented—two resigned. Not long after the post was removed, Denton announced that the site would undergo a relaunch, focusing more on newsworthiness than gossip, and even hinted that the company might be rebranded.

Gawker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2016 and shortly Denton sold all the brands except gawker.com to Univision Communications, which created the Gizmodo Media Group. Gizmodo was later sold again. Bustle Digital Group, founded and owned by Bryan Goldberg, revived the Gawker site in 2021, but shut it down in 2023.

Impact

The blog Gawker—whose tagline was “Today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news”—began and was primarily a commentary on East Coast living. Denton chose twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth Spiers as the site’s first editor. New to New York City, Spiers delighted in artfully denigrating the city’s elite, even when, as Carla Blumenkranz of n+1 pointed out, those elite were not known outside of New York media culture. Though Spiers moved on to other publications early in Gawker’s history, most notably the New York Observer, she is credited with imbuing Gawker with its irreverent and nasty tone, solidifying the blogosphere’s gold standard: snark.

Bibliography

Blumenkranz, Carla. “Gawker: 2002–2007: Pageviews to the People.” n+1. n+1 Foundation, 3 Dec. 2007. Web. 14 Dec. 2012.

Madigan, Nick. "Jury Tacks On $25 Million to Gawker's Bill in Hulk Hogan Case." New York Times. New York Times, 21 Mar. 2016. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.

Mahler, Jonathan. "Gawker's Moment of Truth." New York Times. New York Times, 12 June 2015. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.

Quigley, Robert. “The Gawker Decade: How Gawker Media Defined the 2000s.” Mediaite. Mediaite, 16 Dec. 2009. Web. 14 Dec. 2012.

Sorkin, Andrew Ross. “Building a Web Media Empire on a Daily Dose of Fresh Links.” New York Times. New York Times, 17 Nov. 2003. Web. 14 Dec. 2012.

Spangler, Todd. "Gawker Is Shutting Down (Again)." Variety, 1 Feb. 2023, variety.com/2023/digital/news/gawker-shutting-down-1235509262/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Sterne, Peter. "Jury Awards Hulk Hogan $115 Million as Gawker Looks to Appeal." Politico Media. Politico, 18 Mar. 2016. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.

Thielman, Sam. "Gawker's Latest Privacy Scandal Poses Dilemma in $100m Hulk Hogan Lawsuit." Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 22 July 2015. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

Visser, Nick. "Gawker.com Is Coming Back, But Gawker Media May Not Be." Huffington Post. HuffingtonPost.com, 24 July 2015. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.