Commentators are lamenting Gawker’s shutdown after the company lost a $140 million verdict in a defamation lawsuit funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Stephen Marche, Esquire, August 18, 2016, fears that the Gawker takedown provides a blueprint for others with immense wealth to demolish any media outlet that takes them on. And Marche thinks Thiel favors “technologically driven capitalism subject to no scrutiny whatsoever.”
Peter Bump, The Washington Post, August 18, 2016, said Gawker put aggressive reporting above advertising revenue and set a standard for fearlessness in covering the news. Bump claims that Gawker made writers better in their quest to compete and in effect made the web a better place.
A former editor of Gawker describes the publication as “the first…to treat gossip as an intellectual pursuit on the internet,” and likens it to a “barroom: a loud, sociable space for people to gossip, argue, joke, and whisper, a place where decorum and politeness were not only unnecessary but actively objectionable.” The ex-editor, Mac Read, New York Magazine, August 19,. 2016, sets a task for himself to determine who was responsible for Gawker’s demise. The suspects are Nick Denton, Mac Read, “Gamergate,” A.J. Daulerio, Peter Thiel, and the internet.