Is Gawker Still Gawker After Pulling Story About Condé Nast CFO and Gay Porn Star?
Poynter Institute’s Kelly McBride tells TheWrap, “Gawker really wants to be that reckless, we-don’t-give-a-s— organization that it was five years ago, but it hasn’t been that in a long time”
Jordan Chariton | July 17, 2015 @ 4:12 PM
Last Updated: July 17, 2015 @ 7:29 PM
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Updated 7:10 p.m. PT: The vote by the Gawker board has been updated per a correction by the website.
Has one of digital media’s original bad boys gone soft?
After an avalanche of outrage in response to its story about Conde Nast’s CFO allegedly seeking out a gay porn star for a weekend romp in Chicago, Gawker took the story down on Friday. The post included screen shots of text messages between the CFO and “Ryan,” whom the site declined to identify, some of which were sexual in nature.
But that kind of story used to be Gawker’s daily fare: snarky gossip with a side of vicious.
CEO Nick Denton, who’s been fighting a $100 million lawsuit brought by wrestling icon Hulk Hogan over a 2012 story containing a sex tape of Hogan, cited the changing media environment as well as his own shifting point of view for the rare retraction.
“We put truths on the internet,” he wrote in a statement that would have sparked a pitiless post about self-sanctimony on the Gawker of yore. “That has been the longstanding position of Gawker journalists, some of the most uncompromising and uncompromised on the internet.” Denton went on to take responsibility for publishing the original post, standing behind his editors and writers.
“I cannot blame our editors and writers for pursuing that original mission. But the media environment has changed, our readers have changed, and I have changed,” he wrote.
Some of those editors openly disagreed with the decision to spike the story. Notably, executive editor for investigations John Cook tweeted, “It was a mistake to take this post down,” adding that he and his colleagues fought as “strenuously against it as we could, and we lost.”
Media commentators were quick to note that the sudden reversal shows how Denton’s once-scrappy site has evolved since its founding in 2003. “The process behind this story was incredibly flawed and maybe that was because Gawker really wants to be that reckless, we-don’t-give-a-s— organization that it was five years ago, but it hasn’t been that in a long time,” Poynter Institute’s media ethicist Kelly McBride told TheWrap Friday.
“We haven’t seen anything in recent years out of Gawker that’s really on this level journalistic depravity…that was very much the Gawker of old,” she continued. She pointed to the clouds hanging over the company — including the Hulk Hogan case — that might’ve prompted its self-reflective mood. “Now they find themselves in a grown-up lawsuit, dealing with the things that grown ups have to deal with,” she said, referring to the Hogan case.
Not so long ago, Denton ruled supreme and his site doubled and tripled down on controversial stories as a sport, like its string of reports about the sexuality of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith — and Fox News’ alleged attempt to keep him from coming out of the closet.
But there are signs that Gawker has matured, and Denton now presides over a seven-blog empire with 260 full-time (and just unionized) employees.
In a New York Times profile last month, the British-born journalist seemed ready to redirect Gawker’s focus from recycling gossip in favor of breaking exclusive news scoops. “A lot of our traffic last year came from stories that we weren’t ultimately proud of,” he told the Times.
In 2014, Denton stepped back from day-to-day control an created a “Collective Leadership” structure that included Gawker Media’s VP of business development, executive editor, advertising president, COO, CTO and others. It was this group that voted 4-2 on Friday to take down the offending story about the Conde Nast CFO, with executive editor Tommy Craggs and Gawker Media President and chief legal counsel Heather Dietrick dissenting.
(The Gawker post originally stated that the vote was 5-1 with Craggs as the sole dissenter, but Denton on Twitter later disputed th figure, saying the vote was 4-2.)
In the interest of accuracy: the vote among the managing partners on taking down yesterday’s story was 4-2, not 5-1.
“The removal of the post today is an indicator that the decentralized leadership structure of Gawker Media might be more susceptible to Internet outrage,” Poynter Institute staff writer Benjamin Mullin told TheWrap.
It’s also an indication of how an upstart can only maintain an outsider’s pose for so long, a lesson learned by other online rebels like Perez Hilton, who once drew penises on the photos of celebrities he now socializes with.
How that will affect other Gawker properties like Defamer, whose mission is to bring down Hollywood A-listers, remains unclear.
“Gawker is trying to respond to the changing marketplace,” marketing expert John Tantillo told TheWrap, noting the site is making changes to the formula that “brought them to the dance.”
“They want to be perceived more legitimately and may be maturing and growing up in efforts to be taking more seriously by the establishment media.”
18 Real-Life Scandals That TV Ripped From the Headlines (Photos)
Ray Rice /"Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit," "American Disgrace”
The October 2014 episode stars a fictional NBA player accused of raping an employee. It came complete with security camera black-and-white elevator footage.
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Benghazi/"Madame Secretary," "Another Benghazi"
The episode focuses on the American ambassador in Yemen who has to be extracted from the country after a mob gathers outside the embassy.
In the Season 5 premiere, Carrie Mathison orders an airstrike on a terrorist compound in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan. The episode borrows heavily from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011.
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Jordan Linn Graham/ "Scandal," "Inside the Bubble"
Olivia Pope helps a bride accused of pushing her newlywed husband off a cliff, a case that had the entire country transfixed earlier this year. The bride, Jordan Linn Graham, was sentenced to 30 years after allegedly for killing her husband at Glacier National Park in July.
Instagram
Ebola Outbreak/Fox's new Ebola drama (still in development)
Fox TV is working on a new series centered entirely around the deadly pathogen. More than 6,000 people have died of the disease and 17,000 have been infected. The 2014 Ebola outbreak is by far the most widespread outbreak in history.
CDC
Vince Foster/Inspiration for death of Grayden Osborne, "Scandal" During the Clinton administration, Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park after an apparent suicide by gunshot. Conspiracy theorists still believe it could have been homicide, as Osborne might have had enough classified information to bring down the Clinton administration.
Chinese cyber-espionage/"House of Cards," "Chapter 18"
The show's second season covered the Chinese cyber-espionage. China is believed to have gathered information illegally to bolster its economy, as well as monitoring dissidents abroad.
Edward Snowden/"The Newsroom," Season 3
Snowden escaped the U.S. for Russia after he leaked thousands of classified NSA documents starting in 2013. In "The Newsroom," ACN blogger Neal is forced to flee to Venezuela after he gets a hold of more than 27,000 classified government documents.
The Guardian
Eliot Spitzer/"The Good Wife"
The CBS drama is based on disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and his wife, Silda. On March 10, 2008, The New York Times reported Spitzer had been patronizing an elite escort service. The scandal led to Spitzer's resignation as Governor on March 17.
"The Vampire of Sacramento" (Richard Chase)/ "CSI," "Justice Served" The chilling episode, in which a serial-killer nutritionist harvests organs from his victims postmortem to treat a blood disorder, pales in comparison to the real story of the Vampire of Sacramento. Richard Chase was convicted of murdering six people, along with countless animals, and drinking their blood to treat a completely fabricated blood disorder.
Paula Deen/Trayvon Martin/"Law & Order: SVU," "American Tragedy" "Law & Order" capitalized on both the Trayvon Martin case and Paula Deen's "n-word" slip with this episode. The story follows a Southern celebrity chef who, fearing for her safety in a deserted area of New York, shoots an unarmed African-American teenager.
The Subway Gunman (Bernard Goetz)/ "Law & Order," "Subterranean Homeboy Blues" One of the first episodes of "Law & Order" focused on a woman who claimed she shot two men in a subway --surprisingly similar to the story of Bernard Goetz, the "Subway Gunman." In 1984, Goetz shot four men in a N.Y. subway car. And while his actions were applauded as self-defense by some, others believe they were racially motivated against his African-American attackers.
Rihanna and Chris Brown: "Law & Order: SVU," "Funny Valentine" Chris Brown's beating of Rihanna was one of the most sensationalized stories of 2009. "Law & Order" took their interpretation one step further to show the consequences of relationship abuse. Their main character, up-and-coming rapper Caleb Bryant, also abuses his girlfriend, R&B artist Micha Green, but the episode ends with Micha's body floating next to Caleb's chartered yacht.
Universal CityWalk Murders/"CSI," "35k O.B.O" On Mother's Day in 1995, two women were stabbed to death on top of a parking structure in Hollywood. The "CSI" version of this episode is fairly similar to the real story, though they changed the victims to a couple celebrating their anniversary; in both cases, a bloody handprint leads authorities to the culprit.
Father Gerald Robinson/ "CSI," "Double Cross" The "CSI" version of this case reveals a nun strangled (by rosary beads, to add to the macabre) and crucified in a Catholic church. The inspiration of the story came from the murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, who was strangled and stabbed by Father Gerald Robinson. He's appealing to Ohio's Supreme Court, even though he has been convicted twice.
Gloucester, MA pregnancy pact/"Law & Order: SVU," "Babes" The 2008 discovery of a pact made between girls at a Massachusetts high school, in which they promised to get pregnant and raise their babies together, provided the storyline for "Babes." The "Law & Order" episode follows the murder of a homeless man to the discovery of the pact.
Sean Combs/Jennifer Lopez: "Law & Order," "3 Dawg Night" In this episode, Darryl "G-Trane" Collins and his girlfriend Allie Tejada are present during a nightclub shooting, and ultimately, Allie is convicted of pulling the trigger. Any resemblance to P. Diddy and J. Lo's infamous 1999 incident, in which they were also present for and implicated in a shooting at a New York nightclub, is supposedly "coincidental."
Casey Anthony/"Law & Order: SVU," "Selfish" Another case that shocked America was the 2008 trial of the mysterious death of Casey Anthony's two-year-old daughter Caylee. In the episode based on the case, the young mother in question is accused of killing her child so she could party more.
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“Law & Order: SVU’s” Ray Rice-inspired episode and “Madam Secretary’s” version of Benghazi are just the latest in a long line of controversies that inspired their own TV shows
Ray Rice /"Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit," "American Disgrace”
The October 2014 episode stars a fictional NBA player accused of raping an employee. It came complete with security camera black-and-white elevator footage.