Gawker 2.0 Goes Dark: What Happened?

(AmericanProsperity.com) – Back in 2002, Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers founded Gawker, a blog site that focused on celebrities and the gossip surrounding their lives. It shut down in 2016 following a costly legal battle but re-emerged in 2021. However, it seems that the 2.0 version has also shut down — albeit quietly.

Gawker was very successful, attracting more than 20 million monthly visitors, who flocked to the site to read the snarky, if not sometimes downright nasty, headlines and the stories that accompanied them. In 2016, the site shut down after Hulk Hogan sued it for breach of privacy for publishing a sex tape of the wrestler. The owners had to sell all of Gawker Media to pay for the damages Hogan won in a lawsuit: a final total of $31 million. It never fully recovered after that, though it certainly tried to make a comeback.

The latest attempt came in 2021 when it was re-launched under new owners, Bustle Digital Group (BDG). The site continued in the same vein as it had, with snark and attitude towards the elites, but it was a toned-down version to avoid the same kind of legal trouble it endured years prior. However, it didn’t spark the public’s interest any longer in a landscape that was increasingly reliant on social media and getting their jollies from memes, abandoning satire. Thus, it failed to produce the same results and thus was shut down by BDG.

The site’s editor-in-chief noted the site’s shutdown on social media.

Well, after an incredible 1.5 years, BDG has decided it is done with Gawker 2.0. Can't say enough about how proud I am of the site and all the brilliant people who worked to create it, and what a staggering shame this is. I had an absolute blast, and I love you.

— Leah Finnegan (@leahfinnegan) February 1, 2023

BDG is suffering under the same pressure as many other companies these days and has laid off 8% of its workforce. In 2020, it cut its publication, The Outline, and then in 2022, it closed Input.

Though it’s been shut down, it’s been done quietly, much as the site had remained despite attempts to rejuvenate it.

~Here’s to Your Prosperity!