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

"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..."

Comments

Do what they do best?

[ArchieBunker]

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

Re:Do what they do best?

[sycodon]

"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.

Re:Do what they do best?

[squiggleslash]

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.

Re:Do what they do best?

[king neckbeard]

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.

Phew

[aevan]

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

Thanks Nick!

Exposure

[SuperKendall]

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

Let sleeping dogs lie.

I know this isn't a popular opinion

[rsilvergun]

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.".

Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion

[phayes]

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.

Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

What got them in trouble wasn't the sex tape or outing Thiel, it was Exposés 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.

Re:I know this isn't a popular opinion

[phayes]

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.

Re:Alright

[DontBeAMoran]

Oh shit, this is for Gawker? I thought it was for 4chan, which is much more respectable.

Name it?

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re:Name it?

[Fringe]

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.

I'd like to help,

[Snufu]

but I have already dedicated my spare resources and efforts to support the important ongoing work of the TMZ foundation.