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The court-ordered bankruptcy auction of Gawker Media approached its final conclusion on Thursday, with most of company’s assets set to be acquired by Univision for $135 million. But one thing that isn’t part of the deal is Gawker.com—the website that launched an alternative blogging empire almost 14 years ago.

In other words, while some of Gawker will continue to live on, as Univision absorbs existing verticals like Gizmodo and Jezebel, what many saw as the heart and soul of the company (to the extent it had either one of those things) will no longer exist. Staff were notified by founder Nick Denton on Thursday afternoon.

In the original offer from Ziff-Davis that Gawker announced when it filed for bankruptcy, it looked as though a window had been left open that might have allowed Denton take over ownership of the main site, but that window appears to have closed. The Univision offer reportedly includes a clause that prevents him from competing with the new owner of his former company.

Univision hasn’t disclosed why it didn’t want to acquire Gawker.com, but it’s likely the reputation of the site (not to mention a conspicuous lack of advertising on that particular vertical) convinced the company not to include it in the deal.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Why the death of Gawker isn’t something to celebrate”

If there’s one macro trend almost every publisher is struggling with, it’s the increasing distribution power of platforms like Facebook, and how that is disrupting traditional media business models. Where they once controlled the entire process from creation to consumption, media companies now see their power over almost all the elements of that value chain ebbing rapidly.

As Facebook tries to get publishers to host all of their content on its platform with features like Instant Articles, which provides faster-loading mobile pages, Google has been trying to offer an alternative that it says is more open and more flexible—a feature known as AMP, which is short for Accelerated Mobile Pages.

In its pitch for AMP, which officially launched in February, Google has stressed that it is trying to help strengthen the open web because it wants to blunt the force of walled gardens like Facebook [fortune-stock symbol=”FB”]. Unlike Instant Articles, the AMP standard is an open-source project, one which any publisher can contribute to. As Google’s head of news, Richard Gingras, put it earlier this year:

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Google says it is trying to help publishers, but some remain skeptical”

As Gawker Media prepares for a court-ordered bankruptcy auction to sell off its assets to the highest bidder, the billionaire venture capitalist who helped drive the company under wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that he is happy to have played a role in its failure, and that he would happily do so again if necessary.

Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley VC who helped create the online payment company PayPal and was also one of the earliest investors in Facebook, was revealed as the financial backer of former wrestler Hulk Hogan after Hogan won an unprecedented $140-million Florida court judgement against Gawker in March.

Unable to pay such a massive penalty—which amounts to almost three times its annual revenues—Gawker was forced to seek bankruptcy protection and is now engaged in an auction to sell the company’s assets, an auction that began today with bids from multiple companies (there’s a list here of the most likely bidders).

In his New York Times essay, Thiel said that he was “proud to have contributed financial support” to Hogan’s case, which involved a video clip that Gawker published from a sex tape the wrestler made with a friend’s wife. Thiel went on to say that he will continue supporting Hogan, since Gawker has said it intends to appeal, and that he would “gladly support someone else in the same position.”

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Billionaire who helped bankrupt Gawker says he would do it again”

After its dramatic loss to former wrestler Hulk Hogan in a landmark privacy trial, New York-based publisher Gawker Media is being auctioned off to the highest bidder this week, in order to try and pay the $140-million penalty in the case. All bids are due by the end of business on Monday.

Dozens of publishing companies and other media-industry players have expressed interest in potentially making an acquisition offer for the company over the past few months, according to sources with knowledge of the auction. But in many cases these are competitors who are just looking for more information about Gawker’s revenues, etc. and aren’t seriously thinking about acquiring the company.

At the top of the list of companies who are expected to make a bid is long-time magazine publisher Ziff-Davis, which has already signed an offer to buy the company for $90 million.

That deal was announced at the same time Gawker filed for court protection. Bankruptcy auctions typically involve such a “stalking-horse bid,” which is used to set a floor for potential acquisition offers, but other bidders could come in with higher offers.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Here are the most likely bidders in Gawker Media’s bankruptcy auction”

Media companies that rely on so-called “clickbait” headlines or similar tricks to try and get users to click on their posts might want to rethink that strategy. Facebook said on Thursday that it has tweaked its all-powerful news-feed filtering algorithm to reduce the prominence of this kind of content, because it says readers want to see more “genuine” posts.

And how does Facebook define what constitutes clickbait vs. a genuine post? In a post on the site describing the new algorithm changes, data scientist Alex Peysakhovich and user-experience researcher Kristin Hendrix said that a team at the social network looked at thousands of headlines and came up with a few rules.

“We categorized tens of thousands of headlines as clickbait by considering two key points,” the blog post says. “(1) if the headline withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is; and (2) if the headline exaggerates the article to create misleading expectations for the reader.”

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “You’ll never guess what Facebook is doing to reduce clickbait”

Twitter has spent much of its life promoting itself as a haven for free speech—the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party,” as a number of senior executives have described it. But that commitment is proving to be a lot more complicated than Twitter probably hoped it would be, as it tries to figure out how to cope with systemic harassment and abuse.

The latest flashpoint in this ongoing battle came on Tuesday, when the account of notorious troll Milo Yiannopolous—also known as Nero—was permanently banned by Twitter, following a torrent of racist and sexist abuse directed at comedian Leslie Jones that she says has forced her to leave the service completely.

Somewhere in between those two sentences is the line that Twitter is trying to find, and is being forced to draw: When does expressing an opinion, or engaging in an argument or debate, turn into orchestrated or targeted abuse and harassment?

At the heart of the problem is the fact that Twitter has spent so much time touting itself as a protecter and defender of free speech, unlike other more restrictive platforms such as Facebook (FB). Co-founder and former CEO (and current board member) Evan Williams and others have written a number of times about how “the tweets must flow” in response to demands for censorship from various governments.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Twitter tries to find a balance between promoting free speech and curbing abuse”

Gawker Media founder Nick Denton has a lot of things on his mind right now, not the least of which is the future of his company as it goes through a court-ordered bankruptcy auction—a process sparked by a $140-million court award in the Hulk Hogan case for publishing a sex video.

But that’s not what Denton wants to talk about this morning. After a recent piece written by the New York Times‘ new public editor on the value of reader engagement, he wants to talk about why he sees a future in allowing reader comments when almost every other media organization seems to have given up on them or is at least thinking about doing so.

Is the enigmatic multimillionaire looking for a distraction from the events of the past few months? Perhaps. But interaction with readers is also something that he fervently believes in, and you can tell that not just by what he says, but the fact that Gawker has spent significant amounts of money on it. The company has even integrated its comments into the stories it distributes through Facebook’s Instant Articles service.

Long before the Hogan trial took center stage, Gawker Media invested millions (Denton won’t say how much exactly) in building a commenting and reader-blogging system it called Kinja, which Denton described as nothing less than an attempt to turn the publishing world on its head—to put readers on the same level with journalists and publishers. As he put it at the time:

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Nick Denton says giving up on reader comments is a big mistake”

The new public editor at the New York Times has only been in that position for about a month, and already a media mob seems to be gathering with pitchforks and torches. And what is Elizabeth Spayd’s heinous transgression? Did she admit that the Times doesn’t care about poor people, or that the Iraq War was justified? No, she defended the value of engaging with readers, and specifically reader comments.

In case you haven’t been following this topic over the past little while, it has become so contentious that it approaches “third rail” status in some media circles. Even mentioning it can spark heated debates and get you criticized and/or unfollowed by prominent figures in the industry (and I speak from experience).

Spayd’s column, entitled “Want to Attract More Readers? Try Listening to Them,” drew a stinging rebuke from former New Republic executive editor Isaac Chotiner at Slate, who wrote a response in which he called it “terrible advice for the paper.” USA Today media critic Michael Wolff said on Twitter that the column was “drivel,” and MIT Technology Review editor Jason Pontin called it “disastrous.”

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “The NYT’s new public editor is right about comments, and here’s why”

There have been plenty of newsworthy incidents in the past that were caught on video by a bystander and streamed live on a social network or through an app. But it’s hard to remember a week like this one, with so many terrible reminders that we live in an era of always-on, real-time media—and just how chaotic and complicated and disturbing that can be.

The upside of a world in which everyone has a camera, and can perform essentially the same function as a journalist, is that we can see events unfolding in an uncensored and unfiltered way. That can bring with it a kind of horrible truth, but it can also create a fog of uncertainty.

What responsibilities do these companies have as the new gatekeepers for news? And what responsibility, if any, do we have as users when it comes to sharing that content?

The week began with the death of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man who was shot multiple times by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as he lay on the ground outside a convenience store. Police described it as a reasonable use of force, but videos shot by witnesses painted a very different picture of a man already subdued, with no gun in sight.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Facebook Live and Twitter make us all eyewitnesses now”

It’s easy to get frustrated with social media sometimes—the endless inane Twitter fights, the shallow selfies and food porn on Instagram, videos of exploding watermelons and other ephemera on Facebook. But every now and then, something happens that reminds us of how powerful these platforms can truly be, especially when traditional media either isn’t available or fails to do its job properly.

The sit-in on Wednesday in the House of Representatives is just one recent example. In case you missed the whole thing, a group of Democratic members led by Rep. John Lewis of Georgia decided to protest the lack of a vote on proposed gun-control legislation. In the Senate, the group would have been able to filibuster to show their displeasure, but that isn’t allowed in the House—so they staged a sit-in.

In the not-so-distant past, that would have been the end of it. Without cameras broadcasting the event, reports may have filtered out gradually via other means, but there would have been no real-time visual evidence. But now, everyone with a smartphone is effectively their own media company, a reporter and broadcaster all in one, thanks to Twitter and Facebook and their live-streaming tools. In other words, media has been almost completely democratized, for better or worse.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Love them or hate them, Twitter and Facebook have democratized media”

Facebook Live, the social network’s popular live-streaming video feature, has become a home for a wide range of content, including the famous video of a Star Wars fan enjoying her new purchase of a talking Chewbacca mask. But the feature has a darker side as well — on Wednesday, a Chicago man was shot and killed while filming himself on Facebook Live.

According to Chicago police, 28-year-old Antonio Perkins was shot at about 8:45 p.m. while streaming video of himself and a number of friends who had gathered on South Drake Street. Perkins can be seen talking to the camera while walking, and then multiple shots are heard and he falls to the ground. The screen goes dark, but bystanders can be heard screaming in the background. The video had been watched more than 550,000 times by mid-afternoon on Friday.

The incident is the second time this week that Facebook Live has been used during a violent crime. On Tuesday, an ISIS sympathizer in France stabbed a police office and his partner and took the couple’s 3-year-old son hostage. While in the couple’s house, he broadcast a message live on Facebook with the boy in the background (he was later rescued by a SWAT team). The video has been removed.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Chicago man films himself being shot and killed on Facebook Live”

Two reports on the health of the news business dropped this week, one from the Pew Research Center and one from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The former concentrates on the landscape in the United States, while the latter is more global, but the picture they paint is fundamentally the same: Print and traditional news outlets are waning, while Facebook’s dominance continues to grow.

More than half of the consumers who were surveyed by the Reuters Institute (50,000 people in 26 countries) said that they find news via social media every week, and about 12% of them said it was their main source, with Facebook by far the largest single source. For the 18-24 age group, almost 30% said that social media is their main source when it comes to getting news. The results on the industry have been dramatic, said the report.

The Pew Center study, which was released on Wednesday, has more detail on how the print newspaper business has been decimated by the shift to digital. Last year, the sector “had perhaps the worst year since the recession,” the study notes, and even the industry’s online efforts aren’t really helping much. Average circulation—print and digital combined—fell another 7% in 2015, the largest drop since 2010. Total advertising revenue fell by nearly 8%, including both print and digital.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “The news landscape: print continues to crumble as Facebook dominates”

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced late Monday afternoon that he was revoking the press credentials of the Washington Post for being “phony and dishonest.” It wasn’t immediately clear what the paper did to spark this move, but Trump said in a Facebook post that he was doing so because of its “incredibly inaccurate coverage” of his campaign.

In a previous Facebook update that was posted less than an hour earlier, Trump provided some clues as to why he wanted to punish the Post‘. According to the candidate, the newspaper was being phony and dishonest because it used a headline for his recent speech that said “Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting.”

Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said in a statement that Trump’s decision “is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press,” and that the newspaper would “continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along — honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly. We’re proud of our coverage, and we’re going to keep at it.”

In a sign of just how low Trump’s standing is with the Washington press gallery, a host of media organizations took to Twitter to congratulate the Washington Post and its reporters for being blocked from official coverage of the Trump campaign. Many of them have either been banned altogether or had their credentials revoked after displeasing the candidate.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Donald Trump revokes the press credentials of the Washington Post”

When the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker Media case first became public, it seemed like little more than a legal tiff between a former wrestler and a media outlet that reported on some of his bad behavior. Nothing out of the ordinary, in other words.

But that was before Hogan won a $140 million judgement from a Florida jury—and before it emerged that billionaire Peter Thiel was financing the case, in an attempt to drive Gawker out of business. And now he appears to have succeeded in doing exactly that.

The main creditor, not surprisingly, is Hulk Hogan, and by extension Peter Thiel. On the bankruptcy filing, Gawker lists its current assets at $50 million to $100 million.

In conjunction with the filing, Gawker Media’s parent company also issued a release saying it has agreed to sell the websites and other assets to Ziff Davis, the publisher of PCMag magazine and owner of websites such as the gaming hub IGN and Ask Men. Although neither Gawker nor Ziff Davis have provided a price for the sale, sources estimate it is between $90 million and $100 million. Last year, before the Hogan lawsuit blew up, Gawker was estimated to be worth as much as $250 million.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Gawker bankruptcy filing and likely sale means Peter Thiel has already won”

Anyway you look at it, the World Wide Web is an incredible achievement. The way that it effortlessly allows billions of Internet users from around the world to connect and accomplish things they never could have before makes it easily one of the most impressive inventions of the past century. In fact, it’s so amazing that it seems churlish to criticize it — unless you happen to be the guy who invented it in the first place, of course.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee (who told me once that if anyone calls him Sir in a social setting, they have to buy a first round of drinks) did exactly that during a recent symposium on the future of the web called the Decentralized Web Summit, which was convened in an old church in San Francisco by long-time Internet activist Brewster Kahle.

The downside of the way the web has developed since it was created in 1989, Berners-Lee said, is that the same technology that allows for incredible examples of connectivity also supports “spying, blocking sites, re-purposing people’s content [and] taking you to the wrong websites,” he said, which “completely undermines the spirit of helping people create.”

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “The web needs fixing, says the man who invented it”