Gawker.com go bye-bye

That's hilarious, someone calling Fusion "traditional media."

Good luck proving the intentional malice.

 

Watched this last night. It pretty much goes through the lawsuit and ties together what Big Ragu was saying, that it opens a door. I can understand both sides, but I will never shed a tear or feel any compassion for Gawker, and especially A.J. Daulerio. Not enough bad karma can come the way of that prick. Personally, I have no issue with a billionaire bankrolling a lawsuit. As it mentions in the documentary, Thiel was never on the jury, nor did he sit on the bench. Hate the judicial system more than the guy who was simply supplying money.

In the doc, they try to tie together the Hulk Hogan trial with the Las Vegas Review-Journal being purchased by a billionaire. To me, that's apples and oranges. Once someone with a vested industry bought the paper, the real journalists at the R-J jumped ship. Daulerio, Denton and those assholes got off on humiliating people under the guise of "journalism."

 

Thiel doesn’t play around.

 

Thiel scares me. Not for his politics, wealth or anything - it's mainly a 10-year run that is pretty incredible.
He then went on to the Stanford Law School, and received his J.D. in 1992. After graduation, he worked as a judicial clerkfor Judge James Larry Edmondson, a securities lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell, a speechwriter for former-U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett and as a derivatives trader at Credit Suisse prior to founding Thiel Capital in 1996. He then co-founded PayPal in 1999, and served as chief executive officer until its sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. (Wikipedia bio)

And it isn't like his parents had juice or significant wealth to bankroll him or connect him with movers and shakers. He also sold 75 percent of his remaining shares in Facebook and pocketed $23 million. He is still on the board. Now that he is mostly just a "hedge guy" it seems like a waste.

 

I've come around to the idea that Gawker got drunk and loaded the gun and boasted to everyone that how unafraid they were to play Russian Roulette, and anyone who didn't play Russian Roulette didn't have the balls to be true to themselves, but Theil is still the bad guy who gleefully grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger.

 

Bump...

https://nypost.com/2019/07/30/bdg-postpones-gawker-relaunch-lays-off-entire-staff/

Launch on hold. Entire staff laid off.

 

Laura Wagner scorches the earth over at Gizmodo Media Group (which I think is the ghost of the old Gawker?)

https://deadspin.com/this-is-how-things-work-now-at-g-o-media-1836908201

 

Meh. I mean, the most interesting part of the story was the editor trying to spike the story. What she initially wanted to report is inside baseball stuff I couldn't possibly care less about.

 

That reads like it was written for about 9 people.

 

Yeah, does that get any more interesting after they pass over the first nine people she wanted to see hired?

 

I think it's useful as an example of how diversity doesn't happen in the industry - New guy comes in, says he's committed to diversity, and instead hires almost entirely from companies he used to work at, passing over senior women in those roles, and the one "diverse" hire just replaces a woman already in that role. I think the style she used makes it a more boring read, but all the repeated incidents help to tell the story better.

 

Not as far as I can tell. I gave up a little ways into it once it became obvious it was more about complaining that the new CEO hired his own people rather than promoting from within for some executive positions (shocker!) than anything else. Skimmed to the end and laughed when she gets angry that they tried to kill a story that seems to be mostly about office politics, gossip and grievances.
It's like seeing the newbie reporter thinking they've discovered some sort of scandal the first time they see a high school coach yell at a player.