Gawker Media files for bankruptcy, plans sale of company

Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday and put itself up for auction, as the company’s legal battle with former wrestler Hulk Hogan continues.

Forbes reporter Ryan Mac tweeted a press release stating that Ziff Davis LLC, which owns PC Magazine, AskMen, IGN and other publications, had “entered into an asset purchase agreement” to buy Gawker Media’s properties.

Reports earlier on Friday said that Ziff Davis LLC, the first bidder, had offered $90 to $100 million for Gawker Media. But other bidders could name a higher price for the company, according to the press release.

Just got a press release saying that Gawker has already agreed to sell to Ziff Davis pic.twitter.com/XDzPwWOh21

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) June 10, 2016

Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, wrote in a memo to staff that he would welcome adding Gawker’s online properties to the company.

“There’s a tremendous fit between the two organizations, from brands to audience to monetization. We look forward to the possibility of adding these great brands—and the talented people who support them—to the Ziff Davis family,” Shah wrote.

Hogan, whose legal name is Terry Bollea, sued the company for invasion of privacy after it published part of a video that showed him having sex in 2012. A Florida court awarded him $115 million in March and an additional $25 million in May.

The bankruptcy filing prevents Gawker’s assets from being turned over to Bollea while Gawker appeals that decision. If that decision is upheld on appeal and Gawker is sold as part of a bankruptcy process, then a bankruptcy court will decide how the company’s assets will be redistributed to creditors — which includes Bollea.

Gawker founder Nick Denton estimated last year that the company was worth $250 to $300 million.

Last month, reports emerged that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel had contributed $10 million to Bollea’s legal fees. Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, has a history with Gawker that stretches back to 2007, when the website published a report outing him as gay. The report was titled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.”

Writer Owen Thomas, who authored that report, has said it was meant to address a larger culture of homophobia in Silicon Valley. “I did discuss his sexuality, but it was known to a wide circle who felt that it was not fit for discussion beyond that circle,” Thomas told The New York Times. “I thought that attitude was retrograde and homophobic, and that informed my reporting. I believe that he was out and not in the closet.”

Thiel said that contributing to Bollea’s lawsuit was a “philanthropic” act, one meant to deter the publication from releasing stories that he said bullied their subjects.

“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” Thiel told The New York Times. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”

He said Gawker’s reporting was “very painful and paralyzing for people who were targeted.”

Jason Tanz, editor-at-large for WIRED, told the NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan that the lawsuit was raising alarm among journalists who see Thiel’s actions as a tactic to destroy a media property through expensive litigation.

“He is not suing them for outing him. He’s suing them for Hogan, and based on his actions and based on Hogan’s actions, it doesn’t seem that what’s motivating him is justice for Hogan. It seems that what’s motivating him is, essentially, crushing Gawker through the court system. And there are a lot of people, a lot of people in the press in particular, who see that and get very, very scared.”

In an open letter to Thiel published May 26, Denton suggested that the two of them have a moderated discussion, which he said would be a “constructive exchange.”

“We can hold the discussion in person with a moderator of your choosing, in front of an audience, under the auspices of the Committee to Protect Journalists, or in a written discussion on some neutral platform such as Medium. Just tell me where and when,” Denton wrote.