Formerly called
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Privately owned | |
Fate | Filed for United States Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection; acquired by Univision Communications |
Successor | Gizmodo Media Group |
Founded | October 9, 2003 |
Defunct | September 21, 2016 |
Key people
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Nick Denton (Founder) Elizabeth Spiers (Founder, Gawker.com) Gina Trapani (Founder, Lifehacker) |
Subsidiaries | Gawker.com Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, io9, Jalopnik, and Jezebel |
Website | gawker |
Gawker Media LLC (formerly Blogwire, Inc. and Gawker Media, Inc.) was an online media company and blog network.
It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and is based in New York City. Incorporated in the Cayman Islands, as of 2012, Gawker Media was the parent company for seven different weblogs and many subsites under them: Gawker.com, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and Jezebel. All Gawker articles are licensed on a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license. In 2004, the company renamed from Blogwire, Inc. to Gawker Media, Inc., and to Gawker Media LLC shortly after.
In 2016, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a direct result of the monetary judgement against the company related to the Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit. On August 16, 2016, Gawker and all its brands were acquired at auction by Univision Communications. Two days later on August 18, the company announced that Gawker.com would cease operations the following week, while its other sites will continue to operate.
On September 21, 2016, Gawker Media's assets except for Gawker were purchased by Univision Communications and have been moved to Gizmodo Media Group.
While Denton has generally not gone into detail over Gawker Media's finances, he made statements in 2005 that downplayed the profit potential of blogs declaring that "[b]logs are likely to be better for readers than for capitalists. While I love the medium, I've always been skeptical about the value of blogs as businesses", on his personal site.