Gawker, Mortally Wounded in Legal Brawl With Hulk Hogan, Shuts down Next Week 

Gawker.com, the gossip site whose editorial philosophy has been accused of too comfortably living up to its name, will breathe its fitful last breath next week after nearly fourteen years of operation. The flagship website of Gawker Media failed to make the cut after the company was acquired for $135 million by Univision on Tuesday. Gawker, in a statement announcing its impending closure, noted that staffers would be reassigned to other Gawker Media websites or within Univision.

According to NPR, Univision, a primarily Spanish-language media giant that has also recently acquired popular websites The Onion and The Root, will keep Gawker’s six other websites in the deal– Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Jezebel, and Lifehacker.

While the website had long been derided as an inexhaustible factory of clickbait by detractors, it was Gawker’s prurient fascination with the sex lives of others and its predilection for publishing tabloid-style content about them that ultimately proved to be its undoing. In 2015 Gawker came under heavy criticism for outing a gay man, publishing a lurid description of his affair with a porn star. Journalists were quick to denounce the move as a reprehensible form of gay shaming, arguing that the story had no journalistic merit or purpose other than to embarrass a non-public figure.

Earlier this year, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after a jury awarded former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan a $140 million judgment against Gawker for violating his privacy by publishing his sex tape. It was later revealed that the lawsuit had been bankrolled by billionaire Peter Thiel, who Gawker fatefully outed in 2007.

While many media outlets have taken to celebrating Gawker’s imminent demise and bidding farewell to its snarky headlines, others have expressed unease at the legal precedents this may set.

An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times for instance, notes that the jury’s verdict may exert a chilling effect on journalism and hastens to remind readers that First Amendment principles are most needed to protect the views of those who are unpopular.