How Gawker’s Death Affects You
As of now, Gawker.com has shut down and is gone. Where there had been a fundamental publication that helped found the very concept of online journalism, now sits a static page; full of articles bemoaning and celebrating the death of a staple in the journalistic world for the past thirteen years.
Chances are, if you’re an online writer, journalist, or creator who is any part familiar with the base construction of Gawker, you’ve been shaped by the publication in some way. Though as of today, the entire world will forever be shaped by what has happened to it. Today we learn that an angry childish man, who never learned to not let words hurt them, can take a foundational cornerstone in the freedom of this country (read: news and journalism publications) and shut it down using the penis of a man who wears a bandana and gets greasy for a living.
Though I find the result abhorrent, this is one of the most beautiful checkmates of all time by Peter Thiel.https://t.co/pYkh53tGmC
— dustin curtis (@dcurtis) August 18, 2016
Gawker was an independent publication. Part of its own company, free of the constraints many publications are faced with, Gawker thrived. It stood as a source of honest journalism. Though not always pretty, and not always morally justified, Gawker provided an honest look at the way the world was, and wasn’t afraid to dig its way through the many layers of public appearance to find the blemishes that the world was so desperately hiding. Gawker, as much as any one might deny it, was a pinnacle of old form journalism. Despite frufru articles on the occasion, Gawker was never afraid of publishing the dirty side of reality. It helped shock us out the status that the world has slowly lulled into, and when it went too far, it slipped and its enemies took their chance to shut it down. Peter Thiel never crafted the spear that punctured Gawker’s jugular. Gawker did that for him. He just found the right time to deliver the blow. He saw his chance, and took it. The worst part was that most of the world, despite claiming to support Gawker and free media, secretly championed him on. Ad Age calling Gawker’s death self brought, and select writers of the New York Post pushing the opinion that Thiel was merely the victim of a bullying blog. I feel as if to be a writer in the past 10 years, it’s impossible to not feel slightly burned by Gawker. The site never apologized honestly, that’s obvious. That’s what made it great.
What we’re left with now, post Gawker, is a world of media entities dominated by big money. Comcast, Verizon, News Corp. Rich white men who say they don’t play a part when all they do is tinker. These people and companies own the news that directs our lives. We’re entering a time when the fundamental basis of a free society, the journalists and the free press, are getting financed by men with opinions. Sure, small sites still exist, free of corporate influence and pushing a free agenda (The Awl comes to mind), but with the recent acquiring of Yahoo by Verizon, we’re left with an even smaller playing field. Left, Right, Slanted. The American media landscape is looking darker and darker as we’re all pushed towards dependance as the only means of survival in the free media landscape. The reason why you so many newspapers are shutting down, websites are blocking ad blockers, and the New York Times is pushing subscriptions on you, is that whilst the websites you access might be free, writers are not. It takes money to make great journalism. With ads becoming blocked, writing on the web writing in general, is slowly becoming a lose all economic venture. You can’t live off of paper sales anymore, and you can’t have great journalism based on click metrics.
With the death of Gawker, we loose a stronghold in the fight of free media. With the closure of one of the most controversial sites on the written web, we see that in America, all you need to have your opinion dominate is money and power. That’s the point of journalism, isn’t it? To stand against the swells of the rich and powerful? The breaks of the political? I guess now-a-days ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ is the new motto.