After agreeing to purchase all of the Gawker Media properties earlier this week, Univision has decided to shut down Gawker.com, the site reported Thursday. Gawker said the site will go dark next week.
In a short post, Gawker’s J.K. Trotter said staffers learned Thursday afternoon that the site would close:
Nick Denton, the company’s outgoing CEO, informed current staffers of the site’s fate on Thursday afternoon, just hours before a bankruptcy court in Manhattan will decide whether to approve Univision’s bid for Gawker Media’s other assets. The near-term plans for Gawker.com’s coverage, as well as the site’s archives, have not yet been finalized.
The New York Times reported that the site will remain online but won’t publish any new content after Monday.
Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy in June after it said it couldn’t pay the $140.1 million judgment it owed the wrestler and actor Hulk Hogan in a case that was funded and supported by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. On Tuesday, Univision agreed to purchase all of the company’s assets, beating out tech publisher Ziff Davis, which also submitted a bid.CNN reported on Wednesday that Gawker founder Nick Denton was also leaving the company.
This also marks the end of Gawker’s flagship site, a blog founded by Denton in 2002. Gawker was deeply independent, publishing stories that more traditional outlets wouldn’t touch. The site greatly influenced the culture of online journalism, and it helped launch the careers of many of its former staffers who are now at publications such as Vox Media, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and others.
As news of the site’s closure broke on Thursday, users on Twitter mourned its loss and reminisced:
gawker is dead because peter thiel (w the help of charles harder) has succeeded in creating a world where owning gawker is simply not viable
— jordan (@jordansarge) August 18, 2016
You can hate Gawker, but this whole thing should make you very uncomfortable
Anything can be destroyed if a rich person gets put out enough
— Chappell Ellison (@ChappellTracker) August 18, 2016
all of the writers you like and none of the writers you don’t started at gawker
— brian feldman (@bafeldman) August 18, 2016
Don't know specifically. But Gawker proper was really the only one of the sites without a strong endemic ad proposition.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 18, 2016
Gawker was based on a fundamentally conservative premise: People in power (in the media, politics, tech, etc) deserve esp. harsh scrutiny.
— Nick Baumann (@NickBaumann) August 18, 2016
denton, never sold out until forced to, now https://t.co/uqzRZbSfjI is no more
arianna, got rich and now runs a wellness consulting company— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) August 18, 2016
Sure, Gawker wrote a lot of garbage but it was punctuated by world-changing and often doc-based scoops.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) August 18, 2016
So excited for the worst people on the Internet to celebrate Gawker shutting down
— Bobby Big Wheel (@BobbyBigWheel) August 18, 2016
Silver lining for Gawker dot com staffers: they will all have jobs, be it at Univision or at other Gawker Media sites
— Tom Kludt (@TomKludt) August 18, 2016
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