![]() He explained in an anguished blog post: “I was ashamed to have my name and Gawker’s associated with a story on the private life of a closeted gay man who some felt had done nothing to warrant the attention.” The article named the executive but protected the identity of the escort, who some said was using the gossip site to facilitate an extortion attempt.ĭenton, who is gay, ultimately removed the story from the site after taking a vote among his senior management team. Last July, Gawker was the object of near-universal scorn after posting a story about a virtually unknown media executive who-though heterosexually married with children-allegedly tried to arrange a homosexual tryst with a male escort. That is slightly ironic, considering that Wolff, no fan of this reporter, once boasted that years ago, when his then-7-year-old son went on a playdate with one of Steven Rattner’s kids at the Manhattan financier’s baronial Fifth Avenue apartment, he pumped the boy for lurid details of their Champagne-and-caviar lifestyle-which he then published. The 62-year-old Wolff-whom Gawker has regularly mocked as a “Twitter personality” and “lazy gadfly” while chronicling his quarrelsome divorce from his longtime wife and happy romance with a much younger woman under the headline “Awful Michael Wolff’s Awful Girlfriend Is Pregnant” -has openly rooted for the pro-wrestler’s victory in his USA Today columns. The trauma of the jury’s verdict is only the latest development in the enterprise’s continuing evolution from what frequent Gawker target Michael Wolff calls “an example of publishing without filters” that allows rage-filled, underpaid bloggers to mount “gratuitous and ad hominem attacks” on their betters, to a profitable, corporatized media outlet that Denton has vowed will be “20 percent nicer.” Unfortunately, an adversarial court system does not allow for much public contemplation.” Daulerio’s 2012 story, it’s definitely been cause for some contemplation. Though I absolutely stand behind the newsworthiness of A.J. Honest reporting can be painful to subjects, and both they and our other readers are entitled to a reasonable explanation as to the purpose and point of a story.”ĭenton, for his part, messaged: “We always put the story first, and I take responsibility for that. We aim to write honestly, transparently, and unsentimentally, but also decently. “We reject balance as a virtue but embrace fairness, and endeavor to recognize the humanity of those we cover. “Our reporting is guided by a desire to help our readers understand their world, whether the subject matter is trivial or meaningful,” it says in part. Gawker Media’s recently adopted editorial code, formulated last fall, after more than 100 journalists in the 300-employee company voted to unionize with the Writers Guild of America, sounds positively lofty compared to the down-and dirty gossip site that Denton founded in 2004. “At some point,” Scocca said, “somebody started comparing Gawker to the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men, screaming, ‘You need me on that wall!’ ” “Gawker is not afraid of saying something that’s true, where the so-called respectable media would consider it too nasty,” Scocca explained, citing his February 2014 essay on Bill Cosby’s hidden record of sexual predation.Īt the time, two years ago, the comedian and sitcom star was still a beloved pop-culture icon, and Scocca’s piece-which inspired standup comic Hannibal Buress to mention Cosby’s predatory behavior in his act, which ultimately led to Cosby’s downfall-was the very first crack in the showbiz legend’s wholesome façade. Longtime Gawker writer and editor Tom Scocca said the company’s flagship gossip site-one of seven Gawker Media outlets, including the sports-geared Deadspin and the women-oriented Jezebel, that attract a total of around 100 million unique monthly visitors-is the go-to venue where the traditional boundaries of good taste and decorum are regularly breached. ![]() Our organizations have both been stripped bare: He’s been revealed as a publicity-monger and some of our writers have come across as callous in their search for the real story.” “This trial was hard on everyone, including Hulk Hogan. “Look, I won’t pretend it’s been easy,” Denton instant-messaged The Daily Beast in the aftermath of the verdict. What’s more, as a result of the costly litigation, among other corporate pratfalls over the past year, plus some conspicuously painful soul-searching, Gawker is in retreat from its once-uncompromising devotion to the pitiless values of “true and interesting,” as Denton enumerated them, regardless of how cruel or pointless.
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