Thiel Makes a Bid for Gawker.com, a Site He Helped Bankrupt
Peter Thiel, the technology billionaire, submitted a bid this week to purchase Gawker.com, the remaining unsold property from the Gawker Media gossip empire that was nearly destroyed in 2016 by a lawsuit largely bankrolled by Mr. Thiel.
If approved, the acquisition could be the last step in a yearslong effort by Mr. Thiel to finish an independent journalism outfit that angered him in 2007 when it reported, without his permission, that he is gay, a fact widely known at the time in Silicon Valley.
Gawker.com has received other offers, and it is not clear if Mr. Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, will prevail. A winning bid is expected to be announced in the coming weeks, if representatives of Gawker.com do not take the site off the market.
Previously: Hulk Hogan's Sex Tape and a Tech Billionaire's Revenge on Gawker
Gawker Files for Chapter 11; Won't Pay Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel Wants to Buy Gawker!
Related Stories
Two Soylentils wrote in with an update on Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. After these stories were submitted, it appears to have been confirmed by The New York Times that Thiel paid $10 million to fund the lawsuit.
Peter Thiel Funded Hulk Hogan's Lawsuit Against Gawker
Peter Thiel, the billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist and libertarian who we have reported on several times, reportedly bankrolled former wrestler Hulk Hogan's (real name: Terry Bollea) lawsuit against Gawker. After Gawker published a sex tape featuring Bollea, Bollea sued and was eventually awarded $140 million by a jury. That decision is being appealed.
Thiel has had several run-ins with Gawker's reporting on his political and financial decisions, but the most prominent incident was in 2007, when the website's then-running gossip vertical Valleywag outed Thiel's sexual orientation in a post titled, "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people."
Thiel, who is now open about being gay, later called Valleywag "the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda."
Although the exact details of the arrangement between Thiel and Bollea are unknown, if Thiel negotiated for a share of the lawsuit's proceeds, he may get to stick it to Gawker while earning millions of dollars.
[Continues...]
Recode (Vox Media) reports
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.
Update: 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".
Previous: Hulk Hogan's Sex Tape and a Tech Billionaire's Revenge on Gawker
Gawker Becomes First Online Media Outlet to Unionize
Netflix's CEO offered to resign from Facebook's board in 2016, citing his fellow board member Peter Thiel's support of Donald Trump:
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — who called his fellow board member Thiel's support of Trump "catastrophically bad judgment" in an email leaked to the Times — also offered to resign over his disagreement with Thiel, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Thursday. Sources told WSJ that Facebook CEO Zuckerberg declined Hastings' offer to resign. Facebook declined to comment on the matter to Business Insider.
Now, Thiel may resign from Facebook's board instead in the midst of packing up and leaving the Bay area:
The founder of PayPal and a prominent investor in Silicon Valley, Thiel is reportedly moving his investment firms Thiel Capital and Thiel Foundation out of the Bay Area and into Los Angeles this year, according to WSJ.
In L.A., Thiel is also reportedly planning to build "a right-leaning media outlet to foster discussion and community around conservative topics." Thiel bankrolled the lawsuits that eventually forced Gawker Media into bankruptcy, and has been trying to buy Gawker's now-defunct flagship site.
Although Thiel has called Silicon Valley a "one-party state", in the 2016 Presidential election, Hillary Clinton beat President Trump 72 percent to 22 percent in Los Angeles County.
The Guardian also has an article about Thiel's involvement in New Zealand.
Also at Ars Technica, The Mercury News, LA Times, and Vanity Fair.
Related: Peter Thiel Acquires NZ Citizenship and Large Property
Everything Wrong with Peter Thiel's Doomsday Survival Plan
University Could Lose Millions From "Unethical" Research Backed by Peter Thiel
"Black Hole" of Accountability for Drug Trials Flouting FDA Oversight?
Peter Thiel Makes a Bid for Gawker.com
(Score: 3, Informative) by Apparition on Monday January 15 2018, @03:59AM (2 children)
A few weeks, Kickstarter recommended the Save Gawker Kickstarter campaign [kickstarter.com] to me. After laughing out loud for a good couple of minutes, I looked into it. Apparently, a group of a bunch of former Gawker Media employees got together to attempt to crowdfund a bid to "save" Gawker. Thankfully, the Kickstarter campaign failed with flying colors. Less than one-fifth of the posted initial goal was raised, and many of those that did contribute only contributed $1 just to trash talk Gawker in the Kickstarter campaign's comments section.
Here's hoping that Mr. Peter Thiel manages to finish the job.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Monday January 15 2018, @04:12AM
They should have launched it on Indiegogo. You can select a "flexible funding" option where Indiegogo takes a larger cut, but you get to keep all the money raised even if your campaign is unsuccessful, so you can blow it at the bar. Such as Raines Law Room at 48 W 17th St, New York, NY 10011, a 2 minute walk from Gawker's HQ.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @05:26PM
you really belong to your shithole country
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday January 15 2018, @04:08AM (4 children)
In a non homosexual way this is how do you say... GAY ...
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday January 15 2018, @05:46AM (3 children)
Lame submission! Where is the cutting sarcasm? The mention of meetings with the "Donald", the sucking in of the blood of youth, you know, all the good stuff? Hey, SoylentNews could out Thiel as a Girardian new Age hoax! And then he could buy out us! Profit?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday January 15 2018, @06:33AM (2 children)
Don't worry. I think Thiel can't help himself from clashing with regulators over his biomedical pursuits. In fact, his tendencies will probably get worse as senescence looms (he's only 50 today).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday January 15 2018, @06:46AM (1 child)
In which case, my dear and particular takyon, what can you think of my submissions, now that I am coming up on 2400 years old? Remember, it is not craziness that is correlated with age, nor is it age that is correlated with craziness, but it is craziness that is correlation with conservative political positions, like climate change denial, or vaxxers, or chem-trails and Rene Girard's mimetic craziness. And we are back to the fundamental question: if you are so rich, why aren't you smart? Those whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad. (George Fox, Bro!)
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Monday January 15 2018, @06:50AM
You should get your τ protein count checked out, as well as your midi-chlorians.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @05:52AM (5 children)
They are out of business?, he is the one that funded the hulk hogan thing, or I mis remembering?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 15 2018, @06:35AM (4 children)
Pretty much:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawker [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:39AM (2 children)
So this is definitely nothing to do with getting a well known brand for pennies on the dollar...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:42AM
Ha! sorry to respond to myself but
sucked them dry them bring them back as a slave! Ha! no vampire jokes there...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Monday January 15 2018, @06:48AM
It was brand built on its "journalists", who have already scattered into the wind and who will react very negatively to Thiel taking over.
Sure, he'll get a site near the bottom of the top 10,000 Alexa ranks, but I doubt Thiel would try to make it profitable or build a new platform of journalists there. Maybe use it to aggregate some stories that Gawker would have never run or otherwise dance/piss on its grave by using it as a personal blog.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @10:45AM
IIRC, Thiel also funded a bunch of other people suing Gawker, no matter how questionable the lawsuit. His goal was to destroy Gawker, and that's what he did. In the process, he invented a strategy that anyone rich enough can use against any publication.
This is not an imaginary or theoretical danger either---multiple important stories have already been almost buried [techdirt.com] because of fear of reprisal, and there's no way to tell how many of them were actually buried.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday January 15 2018, @11:56PM
Misogyny strikes again. Donate to Patreon's Kickstarter campaign to give every college-educated, debt-laden, iPhone-having oppressed American woman $1/day.