The Death of Gawker — What Does It Mean?

Gawker is now dead.

It took some time, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the Hogan legdrop after a hot-tag from Peter Thiel thanks to the billionaire’s financial backing of Hogan’s lawsuit.

Whatcha gonna do brother?

Many writers are now seeking employment elsewhere. Many are jumping up and down in excitement at the death of Gawker (I must say, I’m happy to see them gone), while others are concerned about what this means for the future of journalism, along with the implications of a billionaire going backing a lawsuit that can be seen as revenge.

What caused the death of Gawker?

Many things, but Max Read did an article on what killed it. Some noted points from the article:

On Nick Denton:

By 2015, he had taken to insisting that Gawker, under my editorship, was the meanest it had ever been.

On Himself:

The tide of public opinion had changed, and Gawker’s mischievous gossip was no longer a guilty pleasure. It was a problem.

On Gamergate:

As Gawker was imploding in the summer of 2015, a group of teenage ­video-game enthusiasts was throwing gasoline on the already-raging fire. These were the Gamergaters.

Of all the enemies Gawker had made over the years — in New York media, in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood — none were more effective than the Gamergaters. Gamergate, a leaderless online movement dedicated to enforcing its own unique vision of “ethics in journalism,” had first taken up with Gawker Media the summer before, in 2014.

What I’d missed about Gamergate was that they were gamers — they had spent years developing a tolerance for highly repetitive tasks. Like, say, contacting major advertisers.

Peter Thiel

Thiel evidently didn’t agree. Soon after the judgment, Thiel admitted to theTimes that he was behind the lawsuit, which he described as “less about revenge and more about specific deterrence” against Gawker’s “bullying.”

On The Internet

Gawker’s biggest mistake in a way was that it had failed to realize that it was no longer the bottom-feeder of the media ecosystem. Twitter and Reddit and a dozen other social networks and hosting platforms have out-Gawkered Gawker in their low thresholds for publishing and disregard for traditional standards, and, even more important, they distribute liability: There are no bylines, no editors, no institution taking moral responsibility for their content. Or, for that matter, legal responsibility — U.S. law protects social networks from liability for the content posted by individual users.

The article is an interesting read, and it’s obvious that there are some signs of delusion from Max, but it’s an excellent read nonetheless to get a better understanding of someone who was in the belly of the machine.

Many are happy to see sites like Gawker get its due.

When it (Gawker) comes crashing down and it hurts inside…

On the other side, many are concerned about what the death of Gawker means.

What will be the ramifications of a billionaire backing a lawsuit to bring down a company?

What does the death of Gawker mean?

• What are the ramifications of having a billionaire bankroll a lawsuit in order to ensure the death of an organization?
• What are the ramifications of the death of a site that helped kick off the trend of internet clickbait, resorting more on getting page views as opposed to quality journalism?
• What are the ramifications to journalism, as Gawker took a rebellious and questionable approach to the art?
• What are the ramifications to the journalists who worked under the Gawker empire? Where will they go next and what will they write about?
• What’s next for Nick Denton the founder of Gawker?

The next few months will be interesting to see how the media is impacted by the death of Gawker.

To state my opinion, I am happy to see Gawker go. Yes, there was some honest-to-God good journalism done there, but that was far and few between the clickbait articles and the piles of crap that they put out on a regular basis. The sad thing is, that is what brought in the page views. In an age when media is trying to find a way forward due to technology disruption, they did what they did in order to bring in page views.

This is greatly concerning. Clickbait continues to draw the eyes of others, while those that do quality research and writing are on death’s door.

Mother Jones, who did an extensive report into being a private prison guard, cost them $350000, with banner ads bringing in only $5000.

Sites like Grantland and The Dissolve, focusing on longform journalism with excellent insight into pop culture and films, respectively, both folded as they simply weren’t profitable in an age when clickbait and listicles bring in the page views.

That said, excellent Blog sites like Wait But Why produce excellent content with posts that are thousands of words in length, and has a devoted audience.

Sites like Gawker were both a producer and a byproduct of (mainly) producing low-brow content and clickbait catering to shorter attention spans.

And why not? There was a market for it. It was simply a modern version of yellow journalism for the most part, and a continuation of what gossip magazines have done for years. Journalism could take a step back now and course-correct, but I fear that with the death of Gawker, other similar sites will arise from the ashes.

Perhaps former writers will create their own, or move onto other organizations and start bringing that Gawker mentality to these organizations. What journalism needs to do to course-correct is something I have no idea how to fix.

At the end of the day, you need to be bringing in cash. Sad, but it’s true. Why do like Mother Jones did and spend a long period of time and money to barely bring in any ad revenue, when you can bash out clickbait in 20 minutes that will draw far more eyeballs and ad revenue?

Sites like Wait but Why and Bill Simons’ recently launched The Ringer (hopefully) show there is still an audience that’s willing to put aside time to sit down and read, instead of focusing on clickbait. Will that work over the long term? It’s hard to say.

In the meantime, no doubt Peter Theil and Hulk Hogan are celebrating.