CHARLES PRITCHARD
Staff Writer
I wouldn’t want to be on the S.S. Gawker Media right about now.
According to recent reports and Gawker’s own words, the media news and gossip blog has lost thousands of dollars and is slated to lose millions if it keeps following the trend it has been.
But, what is that trend? And why is it following a downward path? Well, there are a lot of reasons. Let’s count them.
First, there are the sextapes Gawker Media published, one of which involved professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.
On Oct. 4, 2012, A.J. Daulerio published a story in which he narrated the contents of the wrestler’s sexual escapades and provided a link to the movie. Seven months later on April 25, Gawker Media was ordered by a circuit court judge to take down the article, video and the comments; Gawker refused to do so, prompting a huge legal battle between Hulk Hogan and the sensationalist company.
The same year, Gawker Media and founder Nick Denton were slapped with a lawsuit by former employees, claiming that during their time with the company, they were classified as interns to avoid being paid.
Legal battles abounded between the former interns and Gawker Media and were followed up with Gawker Media’s handling of the case and cover up of the case from any of its other interns. So far though, Aulistar Mark, Andrew Hudson and Hanchen Lu claim that they worked 25 hours, 24 hours and 15 hours respectively and were not paid anything.
The lawsuit in question is after compensation for the unpaid wages and other damages, but has yet to see an outcome. Instead, the company is seeing a drawn-out year of legal battles.
And now following that?
A whole slew of scandals involving Gawker’s video game blog, Kotaku, and its tech blog, Valleywag.
Kicking off with Nathan Grayson and Kotaku, Grayson wrote a story in which he was personal friends with video game developers and gave them positive press. This was all denied by Kotaku itself, and Stephen Totilo, the man in charge of Kotaku, claimed that there was a look into articles and Grayson, and they did not see any breach of ethics.
As game reviewer and “Consumer Advocate” TotalBiscuit said on Twitter following the announcement, “Kotaku has investigated Kotaku and has found Kotaku innocent.”
And the final cherry on top?
During National Bullying Prevention Month in October, Sam Biddle, writer at Valleywag, responded to the outrage over Gawker’s, along with gaming journalism as a whole, lack of ethics by tweeting “Bring Back Bullying” and advocating the bullying of “nerds” to teach them their place in the world.
Between refusing a court order to remove a video and an article that was purely sensationalistic in nature and nothing more, not paying workers and simply calling them interns, and letting breaches of ethics and employees to run amok, it’s no surprise that Gawker has lost more than half a million dollars already.
$600,000 in legal fees, loss of ad revenue and a whole slather of other problems circle around the company.
Why, advertisers like Adobe, BMW and Mercedes Benz have pulled advertisers from Gawker Media due to the letter writing campaign of angry readers, and the only thing Gawker can think to do is to pull the advertiser list to cut off contact.
Problems like this do not just go away with wishful thinking and ignorance, but it looks like that’s what Gawker Media is striving for.
$600,000 has been lost so far, sending Gawker Media in a downward spiral towards going bankrupt. Taking with it a number of click-bait websites and sensationalistic journalism.