The famous company organized on news blogs, Gawker Media, was bought by the giant media group Univision. The deal was closed on September 9th, and the official price was $135 million.
This purchase adds the seven blog domains grouped under the name of Gawker Media to the ten news websites that Univision holds under its ownership.
Gawker Media owns a series of blog sites that covered a different type of report. These websites are Gawker.com, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Jezebel. Now these will be part of Univision blog group who already has important sites such as The Onion, Fusion, and The Flama, to name a few.
The news site Bloomberg announced that this had been a relative easy auction process. The only companies who made offers for Gawker Media were Univision and Ziff Davids, a prominent publisher and online content managing company.
This process was kept secret until its recent release by Univision as they wanted to avoid further scandals regarding Gawker Media. So far it has been confirmed that Univision plans to keep most the current workers and will take control over the debts that broke the finances of the blog group. On the other hand, the changes have started to be felt as
Univision has unpublish 11 posts related to the lawsuits made against Gawker Media, this Saturday.
The scandal behind Gawker’s bankrupt
The bankruptcy that led to the auction process for Gawker Media came after the group lost a lawsuit made by the famous ex-wrestler, Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea. The trial was done after the panel published in their portals a video of the fighter having intercourse with Heather Cleam, reported to be his best friend’s wife.
One key moment was the declaration made by the former editor of the same group, Albert Daulerio. He told the jury that the video was “amusing” and also made a series of sarcastic comments on how celebrities should not be protected from media investigation.
After a long five month process with different setbacks, the jury vouched for Terry Bollea. The renowned wrestler received the amount of $140 million for compensatory damages, emotional damages, and invasion of privacy. The court also demanded to Gawker’s former owner, Nick Denton, to pay the sum of $10 Million as a penalty for the damages done. Also, Daulerio was ordered to pay $100.000 for the same reason.
Source: Forbes