Kotaku in trouble? Update: Gawker files for bankruptcy, looking to sell the company

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Garth
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PostKotaku in trouble? Update: Gawker files for bankruptcy, looking to sell the company
by Garth » Sat Mar 19, 2016 12:19 am

Hulk Hogan awarded $115m in Gawker sex tape case:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35849140

Gawker owns Kotaku. Apparently it'll cost $50 million to appeal the decision and their yearly profits are significantly less than that.

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twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/710970382606540800



Update:

The $115 million awarded to Hogan "exceeds the value of the entire company by $30 million"


The jury awarded another $25 million:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/21/media/h ... index.html

Update 2:

Gawker files for bankruptcy and says it will sell the company to Ziff Davis or someone else
Gawker and Nick Denton say they won’t pay Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel $140 million.

Peter Thiel is getting closer to his goal: Gawker Media has filed for bankruptcy protection and says it eventually plans to find a new owner for the company.

Gawker and owner Nick Denton are making the Chapter 11 filing today, in order to avoid paying Thiel and Hulk Hogan the $140 million judgment they won in Hogan’s privacy trial earlier this year.

Gawker has told it employees it still plans to fight the Thiel/Hogan case and to operate its publishing business while it does so. But it is also now formally entertaining offers to buy the company and says it has a firm bid from publisher Ziff Davis to buy the entire operation for less than $100 million.

(Update: Gawker has now formally announced the Chapter 11 filing. You can read that press release at the bottom of of this post. And in a memo to employees, Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah says his company has an "asset purchase agreement" to buy seven Gawker titles, and says there is a "tremendous fit between the two organizations." It is worth noting that while Shah's memo says he intends to buy Gawker.com, he doesn't list the site when describing Ziff Davis' plans to integrate Gawker Media's other sites.)

Gawker and its banker Mark Patricof assume that the company will eventually see higher bids while it is in bankruptcy protection. Last year, in advance of the Hogan trial, Denton figured his company was worth something in the $250 million to $300 million range.

But in any case the company won’t trade hands until Gawker either beats back Thiel and Hogan or it finishes a court-approved restructuring. Because no one wants to buy an ongoing lawsuit from Peter Thiel.

Ziff Davis itself is a company that has gone through the Chapter 11 process. The company was once a dominant force in the trade and hobbyist magazine business, but its fortunes declined along with the print industry, and it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008.

Ziff Davis now operates a tech-centric stable of digital titles, including IGN, AskMen and PCMag, that it says reaches more than 100 million readers a month; CEO Shah is a former Time Inc. exec.

In theory, Gawker and Denton are in this position because Gawker published excerpts of a 2012 sex tape featuring Hogan and the wife of one of his friends.

But Thiel, a billionaire who made his fortune by running PayPal, then making an early investment in Facebook, has made it clear that he funded Hogan’s lawsuit to punish Gawker and Denton for a series of posts the publisher made over the years.

"It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence," Thiel said last month in an interview with the New York Times. "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."

Funding Hogan’s case, Thiel said, was "one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done."

Denton has refused to apologize for the Hogan post and has argued that Thiel’s campaign against him and his company will set a dangerous precedent.

http://www.recode.net/2016/6/10/1190376 ... ziff-davis

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Lex-Man
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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Lex-Man » Sat Mar 19, 2016 12:23 am

As much as I hate Hulk Hogan, gawker had this coming.

Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work.
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Met
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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Met » Sat Mar 19, 2016 2:43 am

And nothing of value was lost.

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Harry Bizzle » Sat Mar 19, 2016 2:47 am

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:lol:

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Delusibeta » Sun Mar 20, 2016 1:17 am

Gawker Media's sites vary in quality. Gawker itself is irredeemable dogshit and absolutely deserve what's coming to it, but I'd miss Lifehacker.

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Venom » Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:44 am

When I first read the Hulk Hogan news that exactly what I wondered. Not wanting to be unkind but Gawker is in this position because of their hubris. Sure they started of small but they became a big established media company however their management continued to allow their staff to behave like amateur bloggers and didn't instil on them any journalistic values. Writers and websites can be edgy but you still have to be professional.

Gizmodo being invited to a trade show, then using TV clicker remotes to turn off screens when others are doing presentations.

Kotaku secretly being told by Sony about their social platform PS Home - then revealing all.

"A Judge Told Us to Take Down Our Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post. We Won't!"

Well that's why you are where you are.

Last edited by Venom on Sun Mar 20, 2016 7:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Venom » Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:44 am

Double post.

Last edited by Venom on Sun Mar 20, 2016 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Squinty » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:16 am

Lifehacker is good. Kotaku, not so much. Still sucks that people may lose their jobs over this.

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by 1cmanny1 » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:26 am

Venom, I vote for the post without the smiley.

Does everyone still hate Hogan due to the racist thing? Or has that been forgotten?
All their sites are crude, so nothing of value will be lost.

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by chalkitdown » Sun Mar 20, 2016 11:27 am

Kotaku is mostly garbage but they do some great investigative stories from time to time. I hope Jason Schreier at least finds his feet if they go under, I like that dude.

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Irene Demova » Sun Mar 20, 2016 11:31 am

I'll be kinda sad if Kotaku goes

It's been brilliant at employing games writers I detest making it very easy to avoid anything written by them

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Zellery » Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:39 pm

Irene Demova wrote:I'll be kinda sad if Kotaku goes

It's been brilliant at employing games writers I detest making it very easy to avoid anything written by them

:lol:

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Trelliz » Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:52 pm

Bunch of scummy internet clickbait shitlords defy courts, peddle bullshit, get caught. I agree with irene, at least kotaku was a sort of holding pen. If it goes then they'll spread out.

jawa2 wrote:Tl;dr Trelliz isn't a miserable git; he's right.
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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by That » Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:56 pm

Hopefully they'll become kind of toxic names -- the lepers of videogame journalism they already spiritually are.

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Preezy » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:13 pm

1>3>4>2 wrote:

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by OrangeRKN » Sun Mar 20, 2016 9:38 pm

There are only two websites blocked at my place of work and Kotaku is one of them. The other is the Daily Mail.

Sums it up really

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Moggy » Mon Mar 21, 2016 7:47 am

OrangeRakoon wrote:There are only two websites blocked at my place of work and Kotaku is one of them. The other is the Daily Mail.

Sums it up really


I love that you can watch Pornhub at work but your employers think reading the Daily Mail is going too far.

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by OrangeRKN » Mon Mar 21, 2016 9:41 am

I mean I'm pretty sure that would also be frowned upon, but the sentiment holds true

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by Cal » Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:10 am

The real news here is that the right to privacy has been upheld. We may not like the man or his opinions, but the law still has a duty to protect the individual from an overly-intrusive press.

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PostRe: Kotaku in trouble? Hogan wins case against Gawker, awarded $115 million
by TheTurnipKing » Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:18 am

Never seen any compelling justification for why, if this news was so important, it couldn't have been reported on WITHOUT the video. They needed a damn good justification for this, particuarly continuing to show the video after a judge said take it down. It's pretty clear that they didn't have.

There's no freedom of expression or freedom of speech here. All Gawker had to say was "come and look at Hogans wing-wong". Seems cut and dry that it was all about turning that tape into hits, and thereby money.


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