First of all this isn't and wasn't the gawker ethos.You know, maybe if the head of Gawker hadn't felt compelled to make a joke about leaking sex tapes of four-year-olds while in a deposition Gawker would still be around to shotgun feces from its worthless cloaca. Gawker's brand of flippant, nihilistic cynicism is not the antidote we need to the Trump era.
122 Pulitzer Prizes objective enough?
You need to step away from the keyboard for a bit.
Gawker did some fine things vastly outweighed by their mistakes. If you care about journalism then you are worried much more about the 1 thing they got terribly wrong than the 999 things they got right.
Terrible leadership, costly for the industry, and damaging to journalism itself. They invented nothing and deserve zero credit.
Also yes NYT deserves the side eye it will get for Iraq and Her Emails for the rest of time. No excuses.
I don't want people like Peter Thiel deciding what "shitty" and "unethical" tactics are.No. Don't use shitty, unethical tactics and you'll be fine.
This again????
1) They took down the tape.
2) They didn't take down the words
3) The judge had no credible or constitutional basis for which to order them to do 2).
4) Multiple federal judges stated that the posting of the tape and text were constitutionally protected by the 1st amendment and the judge was in error as she was ordering prior restraint on speech.
And the AJ quote was from a deposition and was a flippant, disgusting response. I don't need to defend AJ's jokes. They were not "gawker"
Nonsense. Why are their writers, largely still writing with a similar style everywhere?
You know, maybe if the head of Gawker hadn't felt compelled to make a joke about leaking sex tapes of four-year-olds while in a deposition Gawker would still be around to shotgun feces from its worthless cloaca. Gawker's brand of flippant, nihilistic cynicism is not the antidote we need to the Trump era.
This doesn't address my argument. The times has more important numerous ethical and journalistic issues. Far more than Gawker.
And the Pulitzers's aren't some infallible credibility award.
Glad we used to have an outlet that helped take many of these institutions to task
First of all this isn't and wasn't the gawker ethos.
But this is what I'm talking about. Somehow a random comment by an author is reason for an entire journalism outfit to be taken down. Its an argument not based on any logic or even principle beyond the fact that people are supposed to dislike it do to a bunch of reprieve talking points which completely skirt around the issues at hand and turn the whole thing into a exercise in propriety
Glad they're gone(they're scummy). However, we should be afraid of the implications from rich people to sue them out of business. They should have been protected. Scummy or not. Now that the well has been poisoned who knows how many breaking stories are being held back.
Thinking optimistically about it, news entities might consider more lawyers ::shrug::
Editors and editorial leadership matter and you know it. Get out of here with this entire bullshit.
You're the one who brought up objective metrics for credibility. Please, illuminate us as to how you would objectively measure credibility to help satisfy you. And spare us any platitudes about subjectivity. You brought objectivity in credibility up in the first place. Argue in good faith.
To have successfully developed a sensibility thats simultaneously attractive and annoying may be Gawkers ultimate legacy. It was a brave but foolhardy attempt to force a new kind of media freedom on an unprepared world. For all its childish snark, Gawker was run by people who understood that authorities in the media, politics, and culture too often fail to keep the publics best interests in mind. Though Gawker is gone, the fact remains that the powerful still dont have the publics best interests at heart. But the courage required to point this out in an amusing, satirical, and pointed manner is in shorter and shorter supply. For instance, a recent story about the allegedly cultlike and possibly abusive lifestyle of rapper R. Kelly that appeared in BuzzFeed almost never ran, thanks to outlets fear of a Thiel-type response. Its impossible to know how many similarly important stories will never see the light of day for that very reason.
All thats really left to say is that Gawker is gone and that Donald Trump is president. That simple reality should comfort the rich and powerful everywhere and chill the bones of the rest of us.
What's this revisionist history about Gawker being great come from?!
Factually wrong things published.
This thread is fucking embarrassing to read. GAF is at its worst when it comes to this topic because it feels like a race of hundreds trying to drive-by without showing a shred of interest in the topic. Here's the conclusion, in case folks want to understand where the author is coming from:
The acerbic, relatable and generally fearless quality is what is in short supply, as evidenced by the R. Kelly story that almost got buried. This isn't how you want young journalists to feel in 2017 and beyond, and that is almost entirely the fault of people working for Trump.
Protected for posting revenge porn?
Nah.
No one is pretending that they're were not scummy, they were. What I mean is if someone with a vendetta like Peter Thiel wanted to they could sue them out of existence. I think the way the political environment is now we need the press to dig deep and not be afraid of being driven out of existence by litigation.
Isn't that a bit like saying we don't have many good fire retardant materials, so it's a real shame asbestos isn't around anymore? Like, the problem statement is fine and needs to be addressed but the latter half is what people have an issue with.
Gawker Media inhabited a space between the onion and TMZ, but the relative independence of their individual writers is what made them special and let sites like Deadspin/Consumerist/Kotaku eventually grow into really, really good sites whose philosophy of not giving the powerful a pass on any single thing is evident in their trajectories as consumer-oriented blogs. It's not 'revisionist history' to say that is all part of Gawker's positive legacy, your feelings on the outing of Thiel or their disastrous behavior in court against Hogan notwithstanding.
So far I'm not seeing anything quite on the scale that Gawker produced in its lifetime. I'm welcome to suggestions of course, since we are in a thread about the aftermath of their demise where the entire first two pages are just 'nah' and 'fuck gawker' shitposts.
They took existing news articles and added a lame title.
It was Gawker, for instance, that filed the original FOIA request for the emails between Hillary Clintons aide Philippe Reines and the news media that would eventually lead to the discovery of Clintons suspect email practices (for which she later expressed regret). That the Clinton email scandal would explode during the 2016 election wasnt Gawkers fault; they filed their original request in 2012. The whole mess might have been avoided had it been forthrightly addressed immediately. Yet the State Department, then the Clinton campaign, denied, fumbled and delayed an effective response for years. Clinton Aide Who Avoided FOIA Insists He Didnt Want to Avoid FOIA When He Wrote I Want to Avoid FOIA, a typically barbed Gawker headline from the whole long-running mess read.
You know, this issue of the monied targeting the fourth estate might get a whole lot of sympathy...but so long as you have to point to fucking Gawker as the prime example, you'll never get it. Fuck Gawker
It didn't look like Hogan's would either. But he got the right judge in the right town to hear it. That's how this one's setting up, too.
Yeah they can stay dead.Nah.
If it weren't for Buzzfeed pulling a Gawker and publishing the Steele Dossier, we would never have heard about Trump's Pee tape.
So you know, there is value in fearlessness.
If the piss tape exists, Gawker would publish it uncensored. If the N-word tape is out ther, Gawker would post it without hesitation.
I think people are arguing that the only reason Thiel could sue them out of existence was because they were scummy.
And more than happy to report on any leaks from the White House. I have huge doubts we missed out on any (true) story that only Gawker would have reportedYes, because no other outlet is blasting Trump on a regular basis.
I'm not acting if it is on the same level, but i warn you this goes towards what fascism is. It starts with one, than the next block will fall after that.
It is simple when you shut one down the next can go down also like i said before you don't when it is going to happen but when it does happen it will be a bigger shock across every single journalist,website or channel. They can sue anyone for anything and it can lead up to censorship that is the goal they want to achieve. You need to think further even if it is gawker not seeing the wider spectrum that is a very dangerous path this will go.