Digital gossip pioneers Gawker Media Group today filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Manhattan court, and publisher and digital media brand Ziff Davis has since entered into an asset purchase agreement to buy the entirety of that company's media properties.
Gawker Media Group, which owns seven media brands including the Gawker.com flagship site, as well as sports site Deadspin, feminist blog Jezebel and technology news site Gizmodo, decided to sell its properties after a Florida judge in March awarded retired wrestler Hulk Hogan $140 million in compensatory and punitive damages after Gawker in 2012 published a sex tape video featuring Hogan and a friend’s wife.
In May it was revealed that the Hogan suit was financed by eBay co-founder and early Facebook backer Peter Thiel, who bore a personal vendetta against Gawker for being outed as gay in that company’s now-defunct Valleywag blog.
Gawker plans to appeal the judgment, and additional lawsuits against the company from Hogan are still pending.
In a statement issued Friday afternoon, Gawker said its Chap. 11 filing was done as a means of selling the company “free and clear of legal liabilities,” and a subsequent sale of its properties would “safeguard the jobs and journalists and other staff.”
An auction of Gawker’s assets has already begun, with media company Ziff Davis currently bidding to acquire Gawker’s properties sans liabilities. Ziff Davis, a subsidiary of j2 Global, publishes PC Magazine, Geek.com, IGN and AskMen. The New York Times today reported that Ziff Davis has bid less than $100 million for the properties, and other potential buyers are still permitted to offer higher bids. Gawker will continue operations throughout the court-supervised auction process.
The Hogan suit is only one tumultuous episode Gawker has endured in the last year. The company was rocked by controversy after Gawker.com in July 2015 published an article detailing a tryst between Condé Nast CFO David Geithner — a married father of three — and a male escort in Chicago, thus making Geithner at least the second person outed as gay in Gawker’s pages. Public criticism of that story grew palpable, yet took an unexpected turn when Gawker Media executives later decided to pull it from the site, resulting in several of Gawker's top editors resigning in protest.
Following that controversy, Gawker executives said Gawker.com would rebrand as a site focused on political coverage. Gawker Media Group founder and owner Nick Denton promised that the new editorial direction would be “nicer.” As part of the shakeup, the company in November laid off a half-dozen staff and shuttered some of its longest-standing sites, including Hollywood site Defamer, TV site Morning After, weather site The Vane, cooking site Kitchenette and the aforementioned Valleywag blog.
In today’s statement, Denton said the company has “been forced by this litigation to give up our longstanding independence, but our writers remain committed to telling true stories that underpin credibility with our millions of readers.”
“Authentic writing, whether it takes the form of honest reviews in technology, video games and entertainment, or revelations about the way the system works, is more important than ever,” Denton said.
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