Gawker, the Irreverent Gossip Site, Will Be Shuttered Again

Media|Gawker, the Irreverent Gossip Site, Will Be Shuttered Again

Gawker is dead. Again.

Bustle Digital Group, which publishes Gawker, said connected Wednesday that it would shutter the precocious revived website and chopped astir 8 percent of the company’s full staff.

In an email to staff, Bryan Goldberg, the main enforcement of BDG, said that contempt a financially beardown 2022, “we person recovered ourselves facing a amazingly difficult” commencement to the year.

“BDG has made the determination to reprioritize immoderate of our investments that amended presumption the institution for the absorption we spot the manufacture moving,” helium wrote.

Mr. Goldberg bought the Gawker sanction for $1.35 cardinal successful 2018 astatine a bankruptcy auction. The irreverent gossip tract helped specify integer media successful the 2000s. It was shut down successful 2016 aft its genitor institution astatine the time, Gawker Media, filed for bankruptcy aft an invasion-of-privacy suit was brought by the erstwhile nonrecreational wrestler Hulk Hogan.

After a thwarted effort astatine a Gawker reboot successful 2019, Mr. Goldberg tapped the exertion Leah Finnegan to yet bring the website backmost to beingness successful July 2021.

In his enactment connected Wednesday, Mr. Goldberg said: “We are arrogant of the tract that Leah and her squad built. Gawker published a batch of superb pieces successful those astir 2 years. But successful this caller reality, we person to prioritize our amended monetized sites. It’s a concern decision, and 1 that, reluctantly, indispensable beryllium made.”

BDG is the latest successful a question of media and tech companies to denote layoffs, arsenic the advertizing marketplace slows and economical forecasts look uncertain. Dotdash Meredith, Vox Media and The Washington Post each announced layoffs past month.

In September, BDG, which publishes a assortment of manner brands similar Bustle and Nylon, unopen down the tech website Input and laid disconnected astir of the unit astatine the civilization tract Mic.

The Writers Guild of America, East, which represents workers astatine BDG, said successful a connection that BDG had laid disconnected astir 40 guild members connected Wednesday.

“This is the 3rd circular of layoffs implicit the past six months that person efficaciously led to halving the archetypal portion from 200 workers to conscionable supra 100 workers,” the guild said.

“Today’s latest circular of layoffs, and the closure of Gawker, came aft much than 2 years of attempting to bargain a archetypal declaration with BDG, and connected the heels of much caller bargaining dates being outright canceled by the company.”