Gawker.com will be shut down next week

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Gawker.com, the brash New York website that broke new ground with its gossipy, no-holds-barred coverage of media, culture and politics, is shutting down after nearly 14 years, brought low by an unhappy, but deep-pocketed, subject.

The news – appropriately enough, broken by Gawker itself – follows the sale of the site’s parent company to Univision. Founder Nick Denton told staffers Thursday afternoon that Gawker.com will come to an end next week. Twitter immediately went berserk in an unholy melange of shock, sadness and Schadenfreude.

The site’s proximate cause of death was a major invasion-of-privacy lawsuit brought by the former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan. Gawker had published a video of Hogan having sex with a friend’s wife; a Florida jury awarded Hogan $140 million in damages. Gawker Media went into bankruptcy protection after the verdict, and on Tuesday agreed to sell itself to Univision, the Spanish-language broadcaster, for $135 million.

Federal bankruptcy judge Stuart Bernstein said Thursday he’ll approve the sale, under which 95 percent of Gawker Media employees will get job offers at Univision. But Denton, an outspoken former Financial Times journalist, said in a staff memo that he won’t be one of them.