Gawker To Shutdown Next Week

Adam Peck - New Republic Composite

Univision Communications has no plans to operate Gawker.com after acquiring Gawker Media’s assets for $135 million, a source told Forbes on Thursday. According to the source, the Spanish-language media organization will operate sites like Jezebel and Deadspin, but will shutter Gawker’s namesake site.

That was further confirmed on Thursday in a post on Gawker.com that said the site will end operations next week. Another source noted that Univision had already explored the possibility of selling the blog but had been unsuccessful in finding any takers.

Even if Gawker.com did find a home, founder Nick Denton, who is expected to leave the company once the sale is finalized, would have been prevented from operating the site due to a non-compete agreement with Univision. Denton informed Gawker’s newsroom of Univision’s plans in a meeting on Thursday. Politico first reported on Denton’s expected departure on Wednesday night.

“Sadly, neither I nor Gawker.com, the buccaneering flagship of the group I built with my colleagues, are coming along for this next stage,” Denton said in a memo to staff. “Desirable though the other properties are, we have not been able to find a single media company or investor willing also to take on Gawker.com. The campaign being mounted against its editorial ethos and former writers has made it too risky.”

The shuttering of Gawker.com would mean the end for an 13-year-old blog that has pushed the boundaries of news with an aggressive, sometimes caustic style. In 2007, the site wrote about the sexuality of PayPal cofounder and investor Peter Thiel, noting that he was gay. Five years later, it published a story on the sexual exploits of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan along with clips from a sex tape with the wife of Tampa radio personality Bubba (Clem) The Love Sponge.

That post led to an invasion of privacy suit, which Gawker Media lost earlier this year. With a $140 million jury verdict hanging over its head, the company filed for bankruptcy, leading to its eventual sale by auction to Univision on Tuesday. FORBES was the first to reveal that Thiel had been secretly funding Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker in May.

Gawker is currently appealing the Hogan verdict, a process that is expected to take years to play out in court. Both sides, meanwhile, are reportedly still engaged in settlement talks.