'The Gawker Foundation' is Crowdfunding a Bid To Re-Launch Gawker.com (savegawker.com)

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'The Gawker Foundation' is Crowdfunding a Bid To Re-Launch Gawker.com (savegawker.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday December 16, 2017 @04:34AM from the rabble-rouser-resurrections dept.

"Gawker may soon return from the dead," reports TechCrunch. While Univision acquired most of Gawker Media's sites last year (and renamed them as the Gizmodo Media Group), the deal didn't include Gawker itself. In fact, BuzzFeed reported last month that a bankruptcy administrator has not been able to find a buyer for the Gawker site, and that lawyers for Peter Thiel (the billionaire venture capitalist who helped fund the lawsuit that led to Gawker's bankruptcy) were arguing that he'd been unfairly excluded from the process. Now a group of former Gawker employees calling themselves the Gawker Foundation has launched a Kickstarter campaign to buy the old domain and relaunch with a nonprofit, membership-funded model.
"The truth is often inconvenient, and Gawker's work isn't done," explains a mirror of their campaign site at SaveGawker.com. "We want to dig deeper." $10 pledges get you a laptop sticker, $250 pledges earn you an invite to their glorious re-launch party, and to solicit $10,000 pledges they're even asking wealthy backers to "Give us half of one bitcoin."

"By setting ourselves up as an ownerless, advertiser-less, non-profit media organization, the editorial team will be able to do what they do best. More than a dozen Gawker Media alumni are involved in this project..."

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Do what they do best? by ArchieBunker · 2017-12-16 04:36 · Score: 3, Funny

Show sex tapes of Hulk Hogan? Just what the world wants to see.

--
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
1. Re:Do what they do best? by sycodon · 2017-12-16 04:39 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  "By setting ourselves up as an ownerless, advertiser-less, non-profit media organization, the editorial team will be able to do what they do best.
  Does that mean the editors can be sued individually?
  It would be a special kind of Karma to turn that pond scum into homeless people.
  
  --
  When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
2. Re:Do what they do best? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 04:44 · Score: 0
  
  They could call it Fawker.
3. Re:Do what they do best? by squiggleslash · 2017-12-16 05:04 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Many of the sexual assault stories now coming to light were actually published years ago in Gawker.
  Gawker was, in some ways, shocking to Americans but not to the rest of the world. It's similar in some ways to British newspapers like The Mirror was in, say, the 1980s. Garish, populist, and often exposing things that shouldn't.... but... one of the few that also exposed stuff happening that absolutely needed an outlet, that "respectable" newspapers wouldn't because they're corrupt.
  And by corrupt, I don't mean in the classic money changing hands way, I mean most of the mainstream media will not touch stories involving powerful figures for fear their oxygen supply will be cut off. Which is why everyone from Roger Ailes to Harvey Weinstein got away with horrific behavior for so long.
  I know this is an unpopular view here, but I'm inclined to think for a variety of reasons the Gawker lawsuit was a net loss for journalism. Gawker was far from perfect, but it was actually necessary. Removing Gawker wasn't a victory for great journalism over tabloid trash - The National Enquirer and its ilk will remain in business for a long time to come. It was a victory for the rich and powerful. That it was easy to spin as the opposite was a fault of Gawker's ethics, but it doesn't mean it was true.
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
4. Re:Do what they do best? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:08 · Score: 0
  
  "By setting ourselves up as an ownerless, advertiser-less, non-profit media organization, the editorial team will be able to do what they do best. "
  Collect advertising revenue, but not enough to support the project, and eventually sell out to Thiele?
5. Re:Do what they do best? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:14 · Score: 1
  
  This isn't fair to the National Enquirer, it actually did sorta-close-to real journalism every once in a while (like exposing John Edwards' affair) - unlike Gawker.
6. Re:Do what they do best? by Hal_Porter · 2017-12-16 05:16 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe Hogan can go after the Kickstarter funds. Dunno about the US but in the UK shutting down one business and starting up another under the same name but decrying the debts would be seen as very sharp practice, the sort of thing you'd expect from Lord Oswald Jacbootéd-Thugge.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  
  On July 29, 2016, in a meeting with the courts, Denton was chastised by the courts, who stated that Denton's valuation of the company had been inflated by him (Denton) to give the impression that the company was worth more than it actually was. In the court records, the judge stated that Denton had informed the court that the value of the stock he himself held was valued at eighty-one million dollars. This valuation was used to give the court and Hogan that the offer of turning over Denton's stock would cover the majority of the money owed by the company. However, the stocks were found to be valued at thirty million, and not the cited eighty-one million. In the wake of this revelation, the court ordered that Denton had not acted in good faith, and issued an order stating that Hogan could begin seizing assets from Gawker.
  
  --
  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
7. Re:Do what they do best? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 07:39 · Score: 0
  
  So out of touch people don't even bother to engage with you half the time anymore. The only reason I am now is because you have been going farther and farther from facts and reality with increasing confidence in the past few months. Being of a certain age, should you be as well, go get checked for early stages of dementia.
8. Re:Do what they do best? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 08:01 · Score: 0
  
  When I see comments like yours and others here, today, in response to this topic I am inspired that there might be a future on the planet after all. I often consider the pavoratzi (or whatever you call them) the scum of the earth. There are better things to do than to talk about nude tapes of celebrities, cellulite, and unflattering pictures of people, regardless of how much money they might have or whatever problems they might be dealing with - white first world problems or black first world problems. . . .There are many other interesting things to talk about and some of them are even more exciting than the part-fiction you find from these sites. Steven Greer's documentaries, for example. Sensational maybe, but verifiable and relevent. I wouldn't give them a dime to re-start their operation.
9. Re:Do what they do best? by Hal_Porter · 2017-12-16 09:23 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  I often consider the pavoratzi (or whatever you call them) the scum of the earth.
  
  I believe it's spelled Pope Ratzo. He is pretty annoying but calling him the scum of the earth is overstating things.
  
  --
  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
10. Re:Do what they do best? by king+neckbeard · 2017-12-16 10:56 · Score: 2
  
  Maybe Gawker exposed some serious things, but their signal to noise ratio was so poor, the value of it in practice was probably around zero. They managed to be the gold standard of crappy journalism in multiple fields. They might have been spared a few flaws, but a Gawker site posting something generally removed credibility from the claim.
  
  --
  This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
11. Re:Do what they do best? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 12:20 · Score: 0
  
  Pavoratzi may be the scum of the earth, but at least he had a decent singing voice.
Phew by aevan · 2017-12-16 04:36 · Score: 2

Thank god. I was wondering how I'd get my 4-year-old sex-tape fix.

Thanks Nick!
1. Re:Phew by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:07 · Score: 0
  
  Why do you want sex tapes of 4 year olds ?
2. Re:Phew by aevan · 2017-12-16 05:33 · Score: 1
  
  Because Nick said we needed to know. Now were it a THREE-year-old, no. That's sick and wrong. Journalistic standards, yo.
3. Re:Phew by OrangeTide · 2017-12-16 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  He's running for US Senate.
  
  --
  “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Exposure by SuperKendall · 2017-12-16 04:40 · Score: 2

So if they restart, and get sued again are all of the Kickstarter backers liable...
Let sleeping dogs lie.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Re:Exposure by Aighearach · 2017-12-16 07:26 · Score: 1
  
  Wow.
  Uhm. The answer is "no," but just wow.
  Why would you even comment about the legal angles, when you don't even have "baby knowledge" of the subject? Bring wrong on the internet doesn't surprise me, but this is just so stupid and silly without purpose.
2. Re: Exposure by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 07:39 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, you'll find that a lot in OP's posts here.
3. Re:Exposure by Sarten-X · 2017-12-16 10:17 · Score: 1
  
  I could say the same thing.
  The short answer is "we don't know". On the one hand, Kickstarter has set up a pretty decent barrier of isolation between backers and creators, mostly by establishing that backing a project does not come with any legal obligation for return. On the other hand, the laws against funding a criminal enterprise are some of the strongest, so it wouldn't surprise me to see a lawsuit go after backers as well. There is some legal basis for such things, mostly lying in money-laundering laws. To the best of my knowledge, though, those legal theories haven't been tested.
  To quote one of the best lawyers I've ever had the pleasure of working with, "Laws and contracts don't matter. All that really matters is what a judge decides. The laws just make strong suggestions."
  
  --
  You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
4. Re:Exposure by SuperKendall · 2017-12-16 11:06 · Score: 1
  
  Uhm. The answer is "no," but just wow.
  The correct answer when it comes to the possibility of being sued is always "maybe".
  To claim an absolute no... well, Wow.
  
  --
  "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
5. Re:Exposure by Aighearach · 2017-12-17 09:30 · Score: 1
  
  It may be true as a general rule, but in your example it is not true.
  It is too stupid to be worth a lot of analysis.
  You can't sue people for having donated money to somebody else. If you find a lawyer and try it, you don't get to a lawsuit, you get to a hearing where a judge decides how much to fine your lawyer.
6. Re:Exposure by Aighearach · 2017-12-17 14:36 · Score: 1
  
  "legal theories haven't been tested" is code for "a bunch of bullshit that they wouldn't even let into the courtroom."
7. Re:Exposure by Sarten-X · 2017-12-17 17:48 · Score: 1
  
  That's certainly a pithy statement, but that logical leap you took cleared right over the contents of a basic civics course. It makes you look stupid and silly without purpose.
  
  --
  You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
8. Re:Exposure by Aighearach · 2017-12-18 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  I dare you to really do it, take that civics course you read about and find out what happens if you try to sue somebody you don't have a relationship with, over the theory that they're part of a criminal enterprise, when no crime has been reported and you don't have any evidence of one. Will courts let you come in and argue that? Or do you get fined for trying? The fact is, you don't have a relationship with the people donating the money, you'd have to sue kickstarter and then ask the court's permission to add the people donating the money. And the answer would be no. If you just put their names on as plaintiffs, knowing that you have no relationship with them, all you're getting is fines. You're not getting to be a plaintiff standing across from them; you'll be a plaintiff getting smacked down by "John Doe" because you failed to sue anybody for anything.
9. Re:Exposure by Sarten-X · 2017-12-18 18:36 · Score: 1
  
  The question was whether the backers could be held liable. If you wish to argue that the act of backing a Kickstarter campaign cannot possibly be illegal, that's a different matter entirely.
  
  ...sue somebody you don't have a relationship with...
  That's your core assumption, but it's the one that's not necessarily true.
  The relationship is that the backers funded the project. Depending on the circumstances, that could in itself be enough for liability. Yes, the plaintiff would have to show that the backers knowingly committed a criminal act, but I'm not going to assume that could never happen. One of the most illustrative examples would be an election campaign. Kickstarter's default process certainly doesn't meet campaign reporting requirements, and knowingly contributing to a campaign that isn't fulfilling reporting requirements is itself a violation.
  In the civil arena, there is precedent for funding sources to be sued as conspirators in another act, also if they participated knowingly. While it is less likely to succeed than a criminal case, it's not necessarily unheard of.
  
  when no crime has been reported and you don't have any evidence of one
  Again, you're assuming that such a thing is impossible, just because it hasn't come up in the few years that Kickstarter has been active. It would depend on the facts available, probably most importantly the Kickstarter project description. I certainly won't assume that there is no criminal stupid enough to publish evidence against himself when soliciting for funding, and that would likely cover the "knowingly and willingly" terms in a good many statutes.
  To abuse the campaign finance example, a statement that the Kickstarter campaign is requiring "no additional paperwork or verification" would be a good indicator that they're avoiding reporting rules, perhaps even to the point that a judge would consider backers to be suitably informed.
  Now we're getting back to the original issue of liability, and the part that has not been tested, and probably won't for a long time to come. While I'm not going to claim it's impossible, it is certainly unlikely that a project creator would openly publish such statements that would reveal themselves and their backers as committing a crime. Until that happens, the question of whether Kickstarter provides any protection from liability remains unanswered.
  
  you'd have to sue kickstarter and then ask the court's permission to add the people donating the money
  There may be a discovery action to name the John Does, but if there's already a case against the project and a legal basis to generically go after the funding sources, there's little reason to expect that Kickstarter would be a defendant. They're just the payment processor.
  
  --
  You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
10. Re:Exposure by Aighearach · 2017-12-23 08:06 · Score: 1
  
  The question was whether the backers could be held liable. If you wish to argue that the act of backing a Kickstarter campaign cannot possibly be illegal, that's a different matter entirely.
  That's as much as I read, because that was not at all my claim.
  My claim was that other important steps have to have happened first. You can't just do it bare, without something big happening that makes it so you can. Nothing like that has happened; no criminal conspiracy has been uncovered, just a crowdfunding effort for a purpose that would be probably be a tort by the entity receiving the money against another entity. If that is what you have, and you accuse a third party you don't have any connection to, you're going to be facing a "show cause" hearing where your fine is assessed, you're not suing that third party.
  Just like, if somebody keys your car in your driveway at night, at it turns out that he works as a veterinarian, you can't sue his clients for the damages to your car.
  The idea that the answer to questions about being sued is always "maybe" is false as soon as you have even one known fact about the situation. If you know nothing at all, then "maybe." But if you know what the relationship between the parties is, not everything always remains a maybe. And if you know they don't actually have a direct relationship, then you know you need a solid reason to sue them.
  In this case, the problem isn't even the receipt of the money, any lawsuit would be over who gets to keep the money. If somebody tried to sue the backers, they'd get a "show cause" hearing. If they thought it was illegal to collect the money for that purpose, they'd have to sue kickstarter, not the backers. But that would be an insane claim that would also likely get to a "show cause" hearing. Their lawyers aren't going to be that horrible at their jobs; they would instead sue claiming that the money collected belongs to them! These "Gawker Foundation" people appear to be trading on the name of the company they lost control of, to try to rebuild it somehow, it might very well be that the rightful owner of Gawker owns whatever they collect. The bankruptcy process is still ongoing, why would this money raised not be part of it? It is hard to claim it is unrelated when they're even trying to use the collected money to bid on part of the bankrupt property! In the name of that property! If they raise $1m, then perhaps that is just $1m that Gawker raised, and the stuff about creating another corporation is just a sham that the Court will pierce. These are more interesting questions than, "golly, when you donate money can you be randomly sued for it, by anybody in the world?" (no)
Civilization is doomed by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 04:41 · Score: 0

You know things took a wrong turn when people rally behind rags like Gawker and get their news from the likes of Buzzfeed.
I know this isn't a popular opinion by rsilvergun · 2017-12-16 04:44 · Score: 2, Informative

around here, but believe it or not Gawker did a lot of real journalism. What got them in trouble wasn't the sex tape or outing Thiel, it was Exposés on Thiel's various shady business deals. They were a muck raker, so yeah, lots and lots of mean spirited tabloid journalism. But that paid the bills on the other side of muck raking: exposing the wrong doings of wealthy and powerful people.

That said, people _hate_ Gawker. I can't see this working out. Funny though that a site that popular and profitable was that well hated. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if that's not on purpose. Given that they were taken down by a very real conspiracy that's not too far fetched. What's that old Gore Vidal quote, "I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I'm a conspiracy analyst.".

--
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
1. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by phayes · 2017-12-16 05:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  No. Gawker did very little real journalism & only did the little they did so they could try and hide behind it.
  Serious journalism does not need to be associated with muckraking excrement, in fact the opposite is true.
  
  --
  Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
2. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by squiggleslash · 2017-12-16 05:17 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  People who know what serious journalism is would never write a sentence like "Serious journalism does not need to be associated with muckraking excrement"; you can reword it as "Serious journalism does not need to be associated with investigative shit" and it'll literally mean the exact same thing.
  Gawker's specialty was muckraking - investigating the powerful and revealing the stuff they didn't want you to know. On rare occasions, that was abusive, such as the infamous Hogan tape. In most cases, it was relatively neutral. In some key cases, they exposed important stories nobody else did because they weren't afraid to piss off the wrong people.
  And yeah, the New York Times, Washington Post, and others, sat on important stories for years because they didn't want to piss off the wrong people.
  It's a testament to the power of those they pissed off that people still believe they didn't publish anything important.
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
3. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  So kind of you to take time out of your busy day to come here and tell us what is and is not "serious journalism".
4. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:36 · Score: 0
  
  If gawker didn't have double standards, it wouldn't have any standards at all. Remember that the whole thing with Hogan was because Gawker refused multiple court orders to take it down. This at the same time that one of their child publications was raging about "leaked nudes of women" and how sites really, really, really have to take it down. While at the same time publishing nudes of males taken by paparazzi.
  It probably didn't help their case any that one of their editors?(former editors?) said that they'd publish child pornography(of a 4yr old) if they thought it was newsworthy. With that the media has a long history of sitting on things they don't want to publish, that doesn't mean they can't leak it to other people though.
5. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:52 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  What got them in trouble wasn't the sex tape or outing Thiel, it was ExposÃ©s on Thiel's various shady business deals.
  
  No, it was the sex tape, and then refusing a court order to remove the sex tape. Please stop trying to associate that dumpster fire of a site with actual journalism; you're not going to help the former, only hurt the latter.
6. Re: I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:58 · Score: 0
  
  Please name the stories, and the timelines. I don't disbelieve you, but cannot on the face of your statement, just believe vthat wapo and nyt sat on , say, an article about Hilary. I do believe those two papers are unconsciously biased, but 'sitting on stories for year's needs some facts.
7. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 06:01 · Score: 0
  
  Gawker pushed a racist and sexist worldview, encouraging their readers to dogpile on anyone who violated their arbitrary and bigoted standards. (Search YouTube for "you're going to be on Gawker" for one such obnoxious example.) I'm sad that their website is gone in exactly the same way I'm sad that Stormfront has lost their website recently: I think it's important that hate speech should be visible, out in the open, so we can see it and be repelled.
8. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Solandri · 2017-12-16 06:01 · Score: 0
  
  People here complain about finding a great job, but being required to sign a non-compete to get it. The principled thing to do is to walk away and find another job, maybe not as cushy, but one that doesn't require you to compromise your principles. It's not always the easiest choice to make, but that's what makes it a principled decision. If upholding your principles always coincided with making the easy choice, we'd all be eating chocolate for dinner, being encouraged to waste time on slashdot at work, and having life handed to us on a silver platter. The real world doesn't work that way. Things are better because people made and are making the harder, but principled choices.
  
  If there were real journalists who did real journalism at Gawker, then they compromised their principles when they took a job at smutty rag like that. I have very little sympathy for them. Things like non-competes and sex tape tabloids exist because people are willing to compromise their principles and sign and purvey those things. If people took the high road and refused to sign nor work for such places, they wouldn't exist. The journalists who agreed to work for Gawker, regardless of what other good they might have done, were part of the problem. If they'd chosen to find work at a respected news organization and carried out their muckraking there, and your conspiracy is true, then Thiel wouldn't have been able to silence them with a trivial lawsuit over a sex tape.
  
  Funny though that a site that popular and profitable was that well hated.
  That makes perfect sense to me. There's a lot of money to be made by appealing to people's baser instincts. Sex, drugs, gambling, alcohol, smoking, etc. We know such things (in excess) don't contribute to the improvement of society, but we're physically wired to desire such things and so if given the opportunity will waste money on them. Principled people recognize this and try to steer those with less self-control away from such things. Unprincipled people use them as a money-making opportunity. If you're using such things to "pay the bills" for real muckraking, then you're effectively cancelling out any good that you're doing for society. You need to quit that job and find one where the good you do outweighs the harm.
9. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 06:19 · Score: 0
  
  There's a difference between investigating items of importance, like the Pentagon Papers, i.e. real journalism, and peddling stolen sex tapes that have no public import other than to inflame the desire of voyeurs. People have different ideas of 'muckrakers' to be sure, but it's the latter sort of yellow journalism that is being decried in this context and it's odd for you to miss that.
  If anything, your post only shows how anyone who wants to investigate the real important stuff must necessarily forgo voyeurism completely.
10. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  Gawker is a shit rag. I'm glad they got taken down. If they weren't shit heels there wouldn't be a case against them.
11. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Aighearach · 2017-12-16 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  I was a big fan of their first big hit, Wonkette, when it was still run by Ana Marie Cox.
  But it certainly wasn't journalism. The vast majority of what they did was blogs. Just look at the name, "gawker." What does that mean, literally? That's what they were. To the extent that they were talking about current events they were like an editorial page. But the editorial page isn't journalism.
  What interests me about this is that their non-profit doesn't seem to be for a legit purpose; they're going to end up having to turn all the money raised over to gawker's creditors, and they'll be crying about it so hard/loud.
12. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 07:46 · Score: 1
  
  They were irresponsible asshats that nearly got Thiel killed by outing him while on a business trip to Saudi Arabia.
  Revealing business dealings that might be questionable is one thing, but people can and do still get murdered over their sexual orientation in many parts of the world.
13. Re: I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 08:06 · Score: 0
  
  This is 100% complete bullshit. Everything those guys did was to get attention for themselves, and usually they were complete assholes. One of their writers pretended to be a terminally-ill cancer patient, for example, just for the attention.
14. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Hal_Porter · 2017-12-16 09:33 · Score: 1
  
  Gawker's specialty was muckraking - investigating the powerful and revealing the stuff they didn't want you to know. On rare occasions, that was abusive, such as the infamous Hogan tape. In most cases, it was relatively neutral. In some key cases, they exposed important stories nobody else did because they weren't afraid to piss off the wrong people.
  What important stories did Gawker expose? Everything they did seems to be spiteful gossip that didn't have any public interest defence - outing Peter Thiel as gay for example, or defying a judge to keep Hogan's sex tape up. Which is what sunk them eventually.
  Even by the extremely degraded standards of US media, they were awful. And even in the US it turns out that they were actually awful enough to lose a lawsuit that bankrupted them.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  
  --
  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
15. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Man+On+Pink+Corner · 2017-12-16 09:39 · Score: 1
  
  Gawker's specialty was muckraking - investigating the powerful and revealing the stuff they didn't want you to know.
  There are a lot of things that wealthy and powerful people don't want us to know. But you know what? When it comes to Hulk Hogan's sex life -- or Peter Thiel's for that matter -- I'm OK with that.
  Good journalists have always understood the difference between investigative reporting and gratuitous shitstirring. Clickbait farmers like Gawker generally don't.
16. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by The+Cynical+Critic · 2017-12-16 09:49 · Score: 1
  
  This is just historical revisionism to an unbelievable degree... The supposed revealing of Thiel's "shady business dealings" was the article that outed him as gay even thou he had previously asked Gawker not to be outed due to working with investors from countries with a rather dim view of gay people.
  
  --
  "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
17. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by interkin3tic · 2017-12-16 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  Serious journalism does not need to be associated with muckraking excrement, in fact the opposite is true.
  Name a SERIOUS JOURNALISM enterprise that hasn't done something stupid. All of them are made up of people who make mistakes. Sometimes really big ones.
  
  The main differences between gawker and (insert SERIOUS JOURNALISM here) are primarily two things. One is SERIOUS JOURNALISM tends to have a longer pedigree (read: they've been around longer) and two: they had deeper pockets that allowed them to recover from their mistakes.
  
  How many times over the past few years have we seen that some blogger can break open a story while SERIOUS JOURNALISTS were twiddling their thumbs on the latest white house press release?
18. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by phayes · 2017-12-16 13:00 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Snort, Gawker didn't target "the powerful", they targeted those in the public eye to sell their trash to the easily titillated.
  Of course those with sufficiently dysfunctional sex lives that they are titillated by peeking into the sex lives of others are OK with Gawker doing that.
  
  --
  Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
19. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by phayes · 2017-12-16 13:09 · Score: 1
  
  People who consider Gawker to be serious journalism clearly have no standing to make judgments on what serious journalism is/isn't.
  Gawkers testament is written in the percentage of muckraking stories on people in the public eye versus non-sexual titillation exposés on the really powerful: 99.99999% to 0.000001%. But then you visibly consider publishing HH's sex tape as "exposing" the RICH AND POWERFUL.
  
  --
  Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
20. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by ArchieBunker · 2017-12-16 18:43 · Score: 1
  
  How can Gawker have any credibility? They claimed looking at leaked nudes of Jennifer Lawrence equated to sexual assault. Meanwhile they were ignoring court orders to take down the Hogan sex tape. Both are famous celebrities so what is the difference?
  
  --
  Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
21. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 23:22 · Score: 0
  
  What got them in trouble was breaking the law. Get that through your head! Thiel would've been powerless if they hadn't done what they did.
22. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by tlhIngan · 2017-12-18 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  Good journalists have always understood the difference between investigative reporting and gratuitous shitstirring. Clickbait farmers like Gawker generally don't.
  The test is generally "in the public interest".
  A journalist who reports on how $SOME_RICH_GUY paid $30M in order to get his building approved, is in the public interest - it exposes corruption in government. A story about $SOME_RICH_GUY's sex life, or who they're seeing as a girlfriend? Not generally in the public interest unless the choice affects government or people in some way.
  And no, "in public interest" does not mean "the public is interested" - reporting on Apple rumors doesn't fall under public interest even if most people are interested in them.
  Reporting of news not in public interest generally means you're not a journalist, but an entertainment product creator. You're create a product that titillates, fascinates and interests people ,but is generally not news.
23. Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-19 05:12 · Score: 0
  
  Especially when he was in Saudi Arabia, where homosexuals tend to be thrown off the top of tall buildings.
This is why we care about net neutrality by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 04:47 · Score: 0

Crappy gossip websites need equal access for complete fools to waste their time while on the toilet.
Or it's about access to abortion. Or pet neutering. I don't remember the details but everyone was all angry for a bit.
Alright by DontBeAMoran · 2017-12-16 04:52 · Score: 1

I'm in for half a Dogecoin. What do I get?

--
#DeleteFacebook
1. Re:Alright by DontBeAMoran · 2017-12-16 04:54 · Score: 2
  
  Oh shit, this is for Gawker? I thought it was for 4chan, which is much more respectable.
  
  --
  #DeleteFacebook
Gawker should just disappear by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 04:56 · Score: 0

Nobody needs Gawker, it was National Enquirer-level crap, and we do not need to validate that 'model' by recreating it. Besides, Thiel will just sue them again eventually, so this is pointless. Just do real journalism for once, under whatever non-Gawker name you choose, and the readers will come.
1. Re:Gawker should just disappear by lucm · 2017-12-16 05:11 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  If Thiel hadn't been a Trump supporter this wouldn't happen. There would also not have been a pathetic documentary on that subject on Netflix. What we're witnessing is morally bankrupt elements of the left who have lost touch with reality.
  
  --
  lucm, indeed.
2. Re: Gawker should just disappear by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 06:08 · Score: 0
  
  I didnâ(TM)t think I had to read far to find someone crying trump in an unrelated topic on /. . Welp, seems I was right
3. Re: Gawker should just disappear by lucm · 2017-12-16 10:51 · Score: 1
  
  I didnâ(TM)t think I had to read far to find someone crying trump in an unrelated topic on /. . Welp, seems I was right
  Your smugness would have a lot more impact if you were able to post comments without broken encoding.
  
  --
  lucm, indeed.
Like we need to see that corpse again.... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 04:59 · Score: 0

There's enough trash on the internet.
They will take the money as salary by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:08 · Score: 0

They will take the money as salary and last a year or two. A news site without advertising is going nowhere.
1. Re:They will take the money as salary by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:13 · Score: 0
  
  Then they will introduce advertising after a year, saying it's the only way they can survive (and continue to pay themselves large salaries)
Name it? by b0s0z0ku · 2017-12-16 05:12 · Score: 2

PeterThielsMomma.com
I echo the sentiments of other posters on here -- they were railroaded because of their legit muckraking, not because of a tape of a has-been wrestler.
1. Re:Name it? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  No, they were railroaded because they couldn't keep their fucking snark out of the legal process. Judge says, "take the Hogan sex tape article down." They defied that order. They testified under oath that they'd publish the sex tapes of child celebrities if they had them, because they believe them to be in the public interest. They lied to the judge concerning the valuation of their stock, which ruined their ability to post a bond to get through the appeal process and ultimately killed the company.
  So maybe they got railroaded by a shitty company called "Gawker," I guess.
2. Re:Name it? by Fringe · 2017-12-16 07:55 · Score: 2
  
  They weren't "railroaded". They wrapped themselves in dynamite, doused in gasoline, with lit candles all around them, and sat on the railroad track when they vocally violated not just the law but then the court orders.
3. Re:Name it? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 19:39 · Score: 0
  
  Let me tell you something brother, Hulk Hogan is not a has-been wrestler dude, he always has been and always will be an American icon and relevant jack.
4. Re:Name it? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-18 08:07 · Score: 0
  
  I bet you voted for Hillary and still support Bernie even though he stole the donations of thousands of people only to give them to the DNC.
  But I digress. Gawker is cancer. It's lower than TMZ and that's saying a lot.
  There's absolutely no reason for it to come back. The world is better w/o it.
Why do they need the same? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:30 · Score: 0

Find a synonym for Gawker and use the money to run with that.
Who cares of Thiel runs his own crap off Gawker.com? It didn't have a good reputation to begin with, so starting fresh would be a leg up for all those guys.
Furthermore if you care about REAL journalism that impacts you, look for local rags that actually work in your community. As an example, go read Sacramento News and Review. They cover stuff throughout the central valley of California and sometimes cover stories of interest outside it as well (Like the expose on Kevin Johnson and his involvement in destroy the National Black Mayors organization in the US, firesaling the original organizations assets to his replacement organization and then controlling the whole thing.) They also had another recent one on Michael Israel, a former anarchist and social activist from the foothills who'd been involved in protests from SF to Sac to the foothills (and elsewhere) and signed on to fight with the Kurdish forces aligned with Rojava, eventually coming back to the US in time to see the state of the US as a result of the hillary/trump campaigns and the ugliness he returned to, and going back permanently to fight with them, only to die a few months later under turkish bombing attacks, and called an extremist by the US government, just a few months before they supplied MORE arms to the Rojavans and claimed they were on their side, before backtracking again to keep in Turkey's good graces.
Gawker may be ugly, but it is really representative of America culture in general at this point.
1. Re:Why do they need the same? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 05:46 · Score: 0
  
  So the guy went from hippy social activist to insurgent guerrilla? Sounds more like a CIA spook, tbh.
2. Re:Why do they need the same? by Oligonicella · 2017-12-16 06:29 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds antifa to me.
I'd like to help, by Snufu · 2017-12-16 05:48 · Score: 5, Funny

but I have already dedicated my spare resources and efforts to support the important ongoing work of the TMZ foundation.
1. Re:I'd like to help, by The+Cynical+Critic · 2017-12-16 09:57 · Score: 1
  
  Likewise, except I've spent my resources on the William Connor foundation for the splendid work he did with Liberace back in the day, because we really need to make sure that famous people can't hide being gay.
  
  --
  "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
ROFL by XSportSeeker · 2017-12-16 06:08 · Score: 1

I see... the same Gawker that led an active campaign against the SCAM SCAM SCAM that were crowdfunding initiatives. That's hillarious.
Ignoring the court orders was part of the trap by rsilvergun · 2017-12-16 08:20 · Score: 1

Gawker thought they were taking part in what is a pretty standard farce in the entertainment industry: Release info that portrays a star in bad light, get sued, use the lawsuit for publicity and then pay the star several million dollars in settlement. It's usually an 'everybody wins' scenario. The star gets a bunch of publicity (no such thing as bad) the tabloid gets a lot of sales/traffic and the fans get some juicy dirt to keep them interested. It's a major part of the entertainment industry that is largely ignored by the /. crowd because, well, we're nerds. It's something mostly of interest to women to be honest. And not nerdy women, but regular run of the mill kind.

What Gawker didn't know was the entire thing was a set up by Thiel to shut them down. So at the stage when the entire thing was supposed to become a settlement, well, it didn't. By then it was too late, and Gawker was doomed.

On the plus side this will probably not happen again. On the down side we lost of of our muck rakers, and other muck rakers have to tread much, much more carefully. As bizarre as it sounds this is a blow for freedom. We've lost a pretty major part of what makes journalism work, and whether we know it or not we're going to regret it. That's just the kind of world we live in.

--
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
1. Re: Ignoring the court orders was part of the trap by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 08:44 · Score: 0
  
  On the down side we lost of of our muck rakers,
  
  Really? Who is dead. Any of the muckraking journalists who weren't just shameless trafficking in yellow journalism can and should be working with a less slimey organisation. Nobody was silenced. A portal was closed, many others are still in existence. I'd suggest, maybe, MotherJones as an example.
that's a hoot by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 08:42 · Score: 0

> ownerless, advertiser-less, non-profit media organization,
Ownerless! Yeah, right. Gawker wants to become a non-profit to skirt tax laws and be an oligarch's personal propaganda organ.
Re: Trump by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 08:53 · Score: 0

MAGA!!! Trump 2020 baby.
You lose again.
Totally trustworthy by MrLint · 2017-12-16 10:03 · Score: 1

Because nothing says good journalism like gawking/
But why? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 10:07 · Score: 0

What would they add to anything?
They should call this Kickstarter by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 11:26 · Score: 0

The Gawker 2.0 Legal Damages Fund, making exciting courtroom battles worthwhile for struggling litigators.
Never mind the Hogan thing... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 13:20 · Score: 0

...how about abetting blackmail? Because that's what Gawker's editors engaged in. They should have been criminally charged with this.
Re:The future of Slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 13:31 · Score: 0

Sorry, what language was that, Chris? Your crammar has gone straight to word salad tonight.
Re:Trump by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 14:58 · Score: 0

Trump impeached? Oooh yeah, buckle up your bible because PENCE is coming in hot!
Re:The future of Slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-16 17:43 · Score: 0

Except most Slashdot readers choose not to see -1 posts and miss your stupid posts and the shitstormers altogether. Personally I browse at 4 and abbreviate at 2.
Re:The future of Slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-17 02:08 · Score: 0

"run off long time users"
Name one, you fat fraud. No one likes you, your stories, your bullshit, and your nonsense advice.
There's no such thing as a "pedobear troll" (what a fresh reference, Chris! You're hip to the lingo of the hep cats!) and no one has left Slashdot because of your "trolls".
However, you are at -1, no one cares, and your bullshit is safely contained away from long time users.
And the wise man said... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-17 03:26 · Score: 0

I am reminded of the old axiom: Don't ever beat a dead horse.
How is it not true? by SuperKendall · 2017-12-17 09:42 · Score: 1

It may be true as a general rule, but in your example it is not true.
Why not? It seems like an incredibly easy target to go after, with an obviously wealthy pool of donors who all have lots of identifying information easily accessed via legal request.
It is too stupid to be worth a lot of analysis.
You think that, but your problem is you don't know how to think like a lawyer to see what is really possible or easy. I am married to a lawyer so I have a lot more insight as to what could potentially happen from real world cases she sometimes discusses.
Remember we are not talking about suing a company on Kickstarter, but the backers instead.
You can't sue people for having donated money to somebody else.
For pure donations it would be harder. But Kickstarter is not about donations, it is about backing something for something in return, in the case of Gawker for example has you become a member of the Gawker club, or at higher levels you are termed a Patron. No reason you could not be sued for material support, the same way people who provide material support to terrorist organizations are gone after by the government. In any case you have a lot more of a link to the resulting company in a legal sense than a donor would.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Again? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-17 21:56 · Score: 0

How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man!?