Frequently asked questions
The sale of Gizmodo and other properties is concluded, the litigation around Gawker.com settled, and my next project underway. Here’s a short recap of the past and a preview of what’s next.
What was Gawker Media Group?
Gawker Media Group was the first and largest independent news organization to emerge in digital media. Run by journalists, it was credited with bringing a bracing honesty — sometimes called snark — to news, lifestyle and product coverage. Founded in 2003, and based in New York and Budapest, the group built brands such as Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Kotaku, Jezebel and Deadspin. All seven properties together drew more than 100m readers worldwide each month, and more than $50m in annual advertising and e-commerce revenue. GMG is one of the only digital media companies to achieve profitability without external capital.
What was special about the business?
GMG pioneered the blog format in professional and commercial media. It also built an integrated blogging and commenting platform that encouraged communities to form around editorial content. Readers, coming for each other as well as the articles themselves, spent about 50% more time on each page, and the hundred staff writers on average reached about twice the audience as peers at other digital media operations. Product recommendations by writers and readers had the credibility on which was built the biggest e-commerce and promotions business in digital media, with about $200m in gross revenues to merchant partners in 2016.
Where are they now?
Six of GMG’s seven properties — Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Jezebel and Deadspin — were sold in September 2016 for $135m and continue under the operation of Univision, the multicultural broadcasting conglomerate. All jobs were safeguarded. Gawker.com, the former flagship, was shuttered after a series of lawsuits financed by Peter Thiel, a Trump ally and Facebook investor who had been criticized by Gawker writers. The main lawsuit funded by the tech billionaire, a privacy case brought on behalf of Hulk Hogan, the wrestler and heartland celebrity, was settled for $31m. The Gawker property may one day be restored, but not by me.
I thought the internet would bring perfect information. What happened?
The Gawker properties evolved from blogs, the simple and fast digital publishing format that encouraged individual writers to “say everything” and dispense with the stuffier conventions of the mainstream media. My own background was journalism in London, the most competitive news market in the world, where I worked for the Financial Times. Vigorous digital journalism has brought to light structural corruption in media, politics and business, and the enduring prejudice that disadvantages people from minority groups. It has encouraged the emergence of new political movements and identities. But fierce competition for attention has also whipped up unproductive cultural conflict, and undermined trust in old institutions before any new consensus is in place.
What comes next?
There is a new challenge: to encourage the free exchange of ideas and the development of internet communities, while avoiding unnecessary provocation and shaming of people from other groups. (And yes, Gawker was proud of its provocative journalism.) Private messaging and niche forums may contribute to a solution. This is the project on which I am embarking. I’m working from Europe, where the technology platforms for my two previous companies were also developed. If you have an interest in conversational media, let’s be in touch — especially if you also have experience in online and offline debate formats, graph databases, encrypted messaging, threaded forums or machine learning.
What do you think of the US justice system?
Gawker’s 2012 story — about one of the recordings made by Hulk Hogan’s best friend of his wife having sex with the wrestler — was legally controversial. In federal court and state appeals court, the topic was held to be a matter of public concern, the crucial First Amendment test, given that the celebrity had often discussed his sex life on publicity tours. But a circuit court jury in Hulk Hogan’s hometown of Tampa found he had suffered emotional distress and economic damage. A continuation of the litigation to appeal and the Florida Supreme Court, a journey to which Thiel had committed funding, would have taken years and involved further millions in legal expenses.
The saga demonstrated the power of dark money in the legal system. By some it was seen as a playbook — using proxy plaintiffs and “litigation finance” techniques — for powerful people to punish critical journalists. “There is no freedom in this world but power and money,” wrote Tom Scocca. Even the tech billionaire who secretly funded the cases agreed that money was decisive: “If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system.”
Did Hulk Hogan show the way for Donald Trump?
As Jeffrey Toobin argued in the New Yorker, and Peter Thiel himself told the New York Times, there are resonances between Hogan’s jury verdict against Gawker.com and Trump’s victory over liberal media opposition. Both Gawker.com and the Clinton campaign were undone by hyperbolic celebrities — Hulk Hogan and Donald Trump — whose reputations were immune to media criticism. Gawker writers were part of a New York media bubble that failed to recognize the antagonism of heartland voters (and jury members) towards coastal “elites”.
The culture war between Alt Right personalities and the “social justice warriors” of left-wing journalism has been brewing for several years. Gawker brought Chuck Johnson to light before he became an adviser on personnel to the new administration, repeatedly criticized the political beliefs of Peter Thiel, and was hit by a boycott campaign organized by Milo Yiannopoulos’s Gamergate group after writers at Kotaku reported on sexism and racism in video game communities. Gawker was one of the few media outlets that dared report on scandals involving figures at Fox News like Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes. Since the election, the battle lines have become clearer: Trump explicitly describes the media as the opposition party; his allies have accused leakers of treason; and his supporters even use the Nazi term, Lügenpresse, to describe journalists.
What were your favorite Gawker.com stories?
One advantage of dying prematurely is that people still remember your best work. The group published a million stories in more than a decade of independent existence; Gawker.com more than 100,000 of them. Here are roundups of the best of the best from Wired, Slate, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, The Stranger, Rolling Stone, The Week and Gawker itself. My personal favorite, a story from 2015 by Sam Biddle about the Sony CEO’s efforts to secure his daughter a place at Brown University and a cool job. Solidly written and reported, it was a great example of the Gawker stories about modern nepotism. That was Gawker’s greatest contribution, not the mockery of heartland celebrities and values or the gas poured onto the culture wars, but the dissection and illustration of the ways by which privilege is perpetuated, the system rigged, and the American dream mocked.