GAF's hatred for Gawker is amazing.
The site practically invented modern online journalism. It infused it with opinion, scorn for elites, vulgarity, allowed authors to tackle weird and idiosyncratic beats and produced some great writing.
Its alumni are everywhere: NYT (Hell one is the lead editor on the style section), New York Mag, Slate, The Outline, Splinter, New Yorker, Wired, Etc.
It informs everything you read today. Its changed political discourse for the better and worse. Its
style guide was way ahead of other online outlets and practically invented (at least formalized in a leading outlet)online writing as we know it today. and Its unionization drive helped unionize many other online magazines.
The "fuck gawker" crowd likes to hype up misguided and a few ethically dubious articles as representative of the entire site and every article they published. If we're going to cast sins on an entire enterprise because of a few mistakes (Conde Nast chiefly) why don't we still shame the NYT for helping kill half a million in iraq, needlessly hyping and partnering with far rightwing hacks with their "clinton cash" articles, their misrepresentation of the clinton email story (that gawker first broke), etc. All far more damaging reporting than anything Gawker ever did.
Why do we continue to post Daily Beast articles after they posted that Olympic Gay Outing story? We seem to not feel that's representative.
Gawker hate, too often seems to be a performative "I'm a decent person" act a lot of the time. A way to say "I'm not with
those people." It doesn't attempt to grapple with the complexities, sins and highlights of a media outlet that existed for almost 15 basically created a new form of journalism. It presents a crude inaccurate picture to slander.
RIP
Its not and it can't be because its subsumed under univision and the whims of saben.
This is nonsense. It's not online because of judge and jury in florida who rendered a bad verdict and peter thiel's quest for vengence. Otherwise it would still exist. Reviled? Maybe the staff is to blame for that but its not the reason for its downfall.