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| Gawker, Filing for Bankruptcy After Hulk Hogan Suit, Is for Sale | |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| Gawker Media, under pressure from a $140 million legal judgment and facing a determined foe in the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is putting itself up for sale. | |
| The company is beginning an auction, and Ziff Davis, a digital media company, has submitted an opening bid of $90 million to $100 million, according to a person briefed on Gawker’s plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the auction. | |
| Such an offer is known as a stalking-horse bid, meant to set a floor in a court-supervised auction. | Such an offer is known as a stalking-horse bid, meant to set a floor in a court-supervised auction. |
| Gawker said in a news release that it would “maintain normal operations” during the sales process. Filing for Chapter 11 stays claims from creditors, including court judgments — meaning Gawker would not need to begin paying the $140 million that was awarded in March to the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose name is Terry G. Bollea, in an invasion-of-privacy case involving the publication of a sex tape. It also allows companies more time and more control as they reorganize themselves. The company still plans to appeal the case. | |
| Gawker’s decision to sell itself came just weeks after Mr. Thiel acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times that he was financially supporting Mr. Bollea’s lawsuit, as well as other lawsuits against the organization. Mr. Thiel, a founder of Paypal and one of the earliest investors in Facebook, was outed as being gay by one of Gawker’s blogs, the now-defunct Valleywag, nearly a decade ago. He said that article’s headline, “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people,” and articles written about his friends and others “ruined people’s lives for no reason” and prompted his decision to finance cases against Gawker. | |
| “It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” Mr. Thiel said of his supporting Gawker’s legal opponents. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.” | |
| The revelation that Mr. Thiel was behind Mr.Bollea’s lawsuit and others has placed Gawker at the center of a First Amendment battle that has captivated the news media and could reshape how news organizations cover celebrities and other individuals. It has also shed light on long simmering tensions between the media world and Silicon Valley, which has become increasingly secretive and elusive. | |
| In a statement, Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder and chief executive, said Gawker was “encouraged by the agreement with Ziff Davis.” | |
| Ziff Davis is a once-mighty publisher of computer magazines that struggled with the collapse of the print advertising business and has remade itself as a publisher of tech, gaming and men’s lifestyle websites. Its online properties include IGN, Geek.com and AskMen.com. | |
| In an internal memo obtained by The New York Times, Ziff Davis’s chief executive, Vivek Shah, said that under the terms of a potential agreement, the company would acquire Gawker Media’s properties but none of its liabilities. When discussing its plans for Gawker Media, it referred to the benefits of having all of the company’s blogs, but it conspicuously omitted any mention of its flagship site, Gawker.com. | |
| Gawker.com, which published the sex tape featuring Mr. Bollea and made its reputation on its snarky tone and aggressive coverage of any topic it felt was interesting, has often been the target of the company’s critics. | |
| Mr. Bollea sued Gawker Media in 2012 over the publication of a black-and-white sex tape that showed Mr. Bollea having sex with the wife of a friend of his at the time. | Mr. Bollea sued Gawker Media in 2012 over the publication of a black-and-white sex tape that showed Mr. Bollea having sex with the wife of a friend of his at the time. |
| In March, after a two-week trial, a Florida jury awarded $115 million in damages to Mr. Bollea, a figure that exceeded the $100 million he had asked for. A jury later awarded $25 million more in punitive damages, bringing the total to $140 million. | In March, after a two-week trial, a Florida jury awarded $115 million in damages to Mr. Bollea, a figure that exceeded the $100 million he had asked for. A jury later awarded $25 million more in punitive damages, bringing the total to $140 million. |
| In January, Gawker sold a minority stake in the company to the investment company Columbus Nova Technology Partners, partly in preparation for the lawsuit by Mr. Bollea. | In January, Gawker sold a minority stake in the company to the investment company Columbus Nova Technology Partners, partly in preparation for the lawsuit by Mr. Bollea. |
| Ziff Davis traces its origins to the late 1920s, when William B. Ziff began publishing hobbyist magazines devoted to aviation. In the 1950s, it branched out into electronics magazines. When the computer industry began to take off in the 1980s, it plowed into the market, with a stable of publications like PC Magazine and Computer Shopper that were bursting with advertising at the time. | Ziff Davis traces its origins to the late 1920s, when William B. Ziff began publishing hobbyist magazines devoted to aviation. In the 1950s, it branched out into electronics magazines. When the computer industry began to take off in the 1980s, it plowed into the market, with a stable of publications like PC Magazine and Computer Shopper that were bursting with advertising at the time. |
| Ownership of the publisher has changed hands many times since the mid-1990s, when it was sold to Forstmann Little, the private equity firm, for $1.4 billion, and later to the Japanese company SoftBank. Ziff Davis was acquired for $167 million in 2012 by j2Global, an internet services company with an assortment of internet fax, online phone, email marketing and other communications services. | Ownership of the publisher has changed hands many times since the mid-1990s, when it was sold to Forstmann Little, the private equity firm, for $1.4 billion, and later to the Japanese company SoftBank. Ziff Davis was acquired for $167 million in 2012 by j2Global, an internet services company with an assortment of internet fax, online phone, email marketing and other communications services. |