And then that tape is stolen, leaked, a website runs it, and then Hogan sues the website-- sues Gawker for $100 million and wins in court many years later, and Gawker's put out of business. That would be weird-- that, in itself, was an insane story that got headlines all over the world.
to sue whoever runs it. And Gawker was aware of this as well. There's like a-- there's a TMZ headline that's like-- and you can see this all in the legal documents.
How did-- did both of them reach out to you? Did Gawker and Thiel's camp come forward with information, or did you reach out to them? Yeah, so Thiel emailed me first because he'd read some of the-- I have a media column for the "Observer," which he had read,
because the whole kind ethos of Gawker Media at that time was that their sites when after the big boys. So Gawker itself went after large media companies on a regular basis, like Conde Nast, and Time Inc., and Hearst. ESPN was in the crosshairs of Deadspin.
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow And gawker.com had been around-- when did it start?
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow So Gawker had been around for six years and was a big well-known media property, and we were going to out-do them in page views
To illustrate how this has happened again throughout history, I want to go to 1851, my hometown, New York, They'd gawk , extra, extra, read about it.
stuff down and I will draw it for you." And it was going along slowly and then we went to a comic con together down in San Diego, just to kinda gawk . And on the flight back, he's really scared of airplanes, and so to distract him we started brainstorming the strip that would become Unshelved. And it was all about this one kind of hip young librarian dealing with stuff. And, and that strip from day one has just wrote itself. Because it is, it is the essence of a sitcom.
And we, at the time, there are like many layers to the Deadspin story. It was part of Gawker Media, which was bankrupted by Peter Thiel funding a lawsuit from Hulk Hogan. Then once Gawker was killed off, the remaining sites were owned by Univision.
It was part of Gawker Media, which was bankrupted by Peter Thiel funding a lawsuit from Hulk Hogan. Then once Gawker was killed off, the remaining sites were owned by Univision. Univision essentially decided, "This doesn't fit our core portfolio.
I mean, I know it's got a commercial definition, and that people ghostwrite things .. And it certainly was "Gawker's" position.
And there is a growing debate on how non-whites and non-Western minorities are being portrayed in video games. , who writes for Gawker and Kotaku, who's seen in the middle here with his daughter, is a key writer in this field. He's also featured-- they are all featured with essays in "The State of Play." So a couple of more examples of how this discussion is going.
He watched her guide the tea bag around the water by its paper tag. He was a gawky, long limbed PhD candidate from semi rural Maine. He was allergic to shellfish, and in his rare free time, he did little other than monopolize his roommate's Nintendo.
I kind of write about it. to be gawked at, and kind of say, look at these trans superstars, right, that's a separate thing from us.
But in late 2006 there was a woman I'd worked with at a celebrity magazine, who was my friend, who was friends with Nick Denton. And Nick Denton owns Gawker Media. And he wanted her to start what he was calling girly gawker.
And in saying that, it improves the journalism. We'll even call Gawker journalism. Um and uh so so so the idea of putting out imperfection, putting out something incomplete, is fundamentally different, a really important thing.
saw me through 6 months of pumping. So, I'm not saying we need to stop, you know, joining in these motherhood online communities and I am just begging, and I know what's going to happen is Gawker will see this little video and they'll be like oh Ayelet Waldman, just like Rodney King why can't we all just get along. But really, why can't we all just get along? Um so with that I'm just going to open for comments. If you're my mother you can criticize me, if you're not my mother you can criticize me too. Questions.
not pleased to see you. Hold your ground. You're not a gawky tourist. You're one in a thousand year long line of hungry travelers who wants to buy an apple and who doesn't speak the language , okay ? You're part of the scene.
But what I always find to be the most essential piece of success is understanding how we got there. I grew up a very gawky awkward girl from about age nine to 22. I was terribly bullied by the mean boys and ostracized by the even meaner girls.
You can see basically up through the trial. In fact the coverage of Gawker during the trial is universally-- almost universally negative. These people deserve what's happening to them.
if you don't know what happiness or success looks like, you end up-- you're offered a promotion, but it requires you to move to a place you don't want to live in. They wouldn't have destroyed Gawker.
if you don't know what happiness or success looks like, you end up-- you're offered a promotion, but it requires you to move to a place you don't want to live in. He was trying to destroy Gawker.
And my book proposal leaked onto the internet. It landed on a site called Gawker.com. And on that day, all hell broke loose.
One of his colleagues is over here in the front row. So I'm pretty sure girly gawker was a placeholder name. So the friend of mine, Geraldine, asked me if I'd be interested in working on this project with her, and I said no, immediately.
at least the ones that I knew, and because they weren't getting paid well. And the whole knock against Gawker Media, up until that point, was that they didn't pay people very well. They were paying bloggers maybe $12 a post.
It was that it would be something I'd want to read, and it would be a kind of rebuke to women's magazines, because the whole kind ethos of Gawker Media at that time was that their sites when after the big boys. So Gawker itself went after large media companies on a regular basis, like Conde Nast, and Time Inc., and Hearst.
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow Uniques were three million for Gawker and-- Because we were usually-- --two for you.
He does not-- it's a $100 million case, but I don't think they necessarily thought they would be winning $100 million. It's not until after the discovery and then as Gawker-- as they go through the case that their odds get-- so if Gawker had taken it seriously at the outset, and maybe they'd-- well, first off, they get two cease and desist orders that tell them-- that demand they take the tape down.
cut, or maybe that they had violated someone's privacy, any number of violations, that they would find people who were willing to let Thiel back their case against Gawker. And they really didn't find anything right away.
But there's a TMZ headline that's like, Hogan-- I will sue whoever runs sex tape. And then the publicist at TMZ sends it to Gawker's tip line, which goes to all their editors. So they knew that this was going to happen, or they knew that there was a risk of it happening.
if you don't know what happiness or success looks like, you end up-- you're offered a promotion, but it requires you to move to a place you don't want to live in. Why didn't he write an op ed about Gawker?
if you don't know what happiness or success looks like, you end up-- you're offered a promotion, but it requires you to move to a place you don't want to live in. So that's-- there's a quote from one of the Gawker writers-- it's in the book.
I mean, I know it's got a commercial definition, and that people ghostwrite things .. If it's all out there in some "Gawker" universe, then I think it's a degradation of human experience, I have to say.
And Nick Denton owns Gawker Media. And he wanted her to start what he was calling girly gawker. That was a placeholder name, I think.
--you built an audience very quickly. Well, Gawker, I have a lot of regard Gawker. I mean there are some folks who are critical of their sites, others are not.
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow And I think one of the great things that Gawker did, and this was maybe a month after the site launched, was they
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow And it became clear that we were going to out-do gawker.com in page views.
um, but they were, you know, ridiculing me, and I actually feel like Gawker is my, every time I feel like nobody reads me or I'm not successful or my career has been a failure, at that moment, reliably Gawker will like publish one of my tweets in this you know huge screaming bout of Ayelet loathing. And it just reminds me that I'm like alive, you know, and that I'm still out there. But at least some neurotic envious crazy 22-year-old writer want-to-be in New York City knows who I am. Um, Andrew Sullivan, who um at the time
But Hogan got to this point of no return, and so it was less-- less and less likely that he would settle. I think it's more that, had Gawker taken a tack that was, essentially, look, we're a media outlet, our job is to run stories. We ran this story because we thought it was newsworthy at the time.
So then how did Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel link up? Because I'm assuming there's a lot of people that had vendettas against Gawker. Yeah, yeah, obviously, they weren't friends beforehand.
So I think, in this case, for instance, Thiel wasn't thinking, oh, I would like to just hurt Gawker. I think he was like, I want Gawker to not exist at the end, which is somewhat ominous and can be scary depending on where he's-- but he had a very clear end in mind, which I think is the strategic imperative.
I thought I was going to do it with my friend, and then she drops out, so now it's on me. And I was well aware of the fact that New York media people read Gawker sites. And that might be a tiny little population, but their opinion mattered to me.
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow But it's funny, because Gawker was known for being snarky.
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow And then you would see things, like on gawker.com specifically, a use of the royal "we." I feel like maybe the tone was more, not coherent,
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow I mean at one point, when Gawker Media was using page views as the metric by which people were judged, before they switch
And my favorite scene from the book, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, they go down to Washington Sq. Park in New York and they're dressed in their Gypsy gear. And everybody's hanging out and this old tourist couple comes by and starts gawking at them. And the woman, she taps her husband on the arm and she says, "Robert take their picture I think they're artists." And the husband says, "Ah get out of here they're just kids."
So no offense to "The New York Times" or the BuzzFeeds or the-- rest in peace-- Gawkers or anything like that who lots of great writers and journalists
But before I got laid off from "Ward's Auto," I was freelancing for "Jalopnik." "Jalopnik" used to be owned by Gawker.
Even from the media itself, how could they do this? AJ Daulerio's testimony is a sort of media crisis where almost everyone is uniformly anti-Gawker at this point. Then the verdict happens, and the verdict surprises everyone in just how enormous it is.
So they knew that this was going to happen, or they knew that there was a risk of it happening. And so he'd been very public about it, and then Gawker runs it. And that's the-- Thiel is, at that point, laying in wait for something like that to happen.