Nick Denton Talks to David Remnick About Gawker

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Nick Denton Talks to David Remnick About Gawker"

The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Date: July 18, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Nick Denton (Founder, Gawker Media)

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Episode Overview

In this candid and sharp-edged conversation, The New Yorker’s David Remnick interviews Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media, about the rise and stunning fall of his disruptive media company. Denton reflects on Gawker’s controversial editorial philosophy, the high-profile lawsuit led by Hulk Hogan and secretly bankrolled by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, and the broader consequences for media, free speech, and personal privacy in the internet age. The episode also explores Denton's persona, the ethics of "outing," and Gawker’s uncertain future as it faces bankruptcy and potential sale.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Gawker’s Philosophy: "When in Doubt, Put It Out"

• Denton’s Editorial Approach:

  • Gawker’s "when in doubt, put it out" philosophy prioritized transparency and a willingness to publish stories others wouldn’t touch.
    • "Our impetus was always, when in doubt, put it out." — Nick Denton [03:35]
  • Denton acknowledges he embraced a "dark lord" persona as a defense mechanism against criticism, and admits it could make him seem daunting or mean-spirited at times.
    • "Makes it a little bit easier to deal with the inevitable criticism of articles...if you have that reputation of somebody who puts the story first." — Nick Denton [03:47]

• Comparison to Mainstream Media:

  • Remnick contrasts Gawker's approach with more traditional media outlets:
    • "Whereas at places like mine or the New York Times or the Washington Post...that's not the rule of the road. When in doubt, put it out. Something different." — David Remnick [04:06]
  • Denton champions a diverse media "ecosystem," claiming the British press often got to the truth faster by being less cautious.
    • "The British press got to the truth in its own way, I'd say about six to 12 months before the American press." — Nick Denton [04:57]

2. The Ethics and Impact of Outing

• Personal Motivation and the Double Standard:

  • Denton discusses being driven by his experience as a gay man and frustration with unspoken "open secrets."
    • "Maybe it was because I was gay and I grew up hating open secrets...let's just have it out. The truth will set you free." — David Remnick quoting Denton [06:59]
  • Argues that media often applies different standards to publicizing heterosexual versus homosexual relationships, which he viewed as discriminatory.
    • "The thing that always offended me the most was the double standard...that same standard was not applied to gay people." — Nick Denton [07:37]

• Who Decides?

  • Remnick challenges Denton's rationale: "Why does Nick Denton get to decide?" [08:10]
  • Denton claims it’s about reporting the facts, not deciding someone’s agency, and contends the open acknowledgment can be empowering for marginalized groups.
    • "If information is traveling around [already]...I think the world is a lot healthier..." — Nick Denton [08:14, 08:54]

3. The Peter Thiel Vendetta and the Hulk Hogan Lawsuit

• Gawker’s Coverage of Thiel & Its Fallout:

  • Gawker "outed" Peter Thiel in 2007, sowing deep resentment.
    • "It's a positive piece...He was annoyed, I believe, about mockery of his political opinions." — Nick Denton [10:06]
  • Denton describes Thiel as a "strange sort of Nietzschean libertarian," noting their coverage didn’t always treat Thiel’s "serious political ideas" with respect.
    • "We didn't treat them with a huge amount of respect, and then we covered business dealings that were inconvenient for him." [10:38]

• Hulk Hogan Trial and Bankruptcy:

  • Remnick explains the $140 million verdict against Gawker for publishing the Hogan sex tape, later revealed to be funded by Thiel as an act of revenge.
    • "A billionaire financing secret lawsuits against a media company, no matter what it's done, is an extremely dangerous trend." — David Remnick [11:46]
  • Denton insists the tape was newsworthy and defends Gawker’s editorial choice.
    • "The Hulk Hogan story is a newsworthy story. Federal judge found it newsworthy." — Nick Denton [11:57]

• Damage in Court:

  • Denton admits Gawker made mistakes in the trial, notably a dark joke from then-editor A.J. Daulerio about editorial boundaries, which was used against them.
    • "AJ Delario...made a dark New York blogger joke that a tape of a four year old would clearly not be acceptable. And that was...everywhere." — Nick Denton [12:23]

4. Fate of Gawker Media & Media’s Uncertain Future

• Sale & Job Security:

  • With Gawker in bankruptcy, Denton affirms a binding sale agreement with Ziff Davis for $90 million, suggesting most jobs would be preserved.
    • "That transaction should close in August and that will preserve the brands...most of the jobs will be safeguarded and that's my top priority right now." — Nick Denton [13:48]
  • Profitability, not promises, is the best "insurance policy" for continued independence.
    • "We've got one of the most successful e-commerce businesses, so we're not even solely dependent on advertising." — Nick Denton [14:32]

• Denton’s Next Steps:

  • He plans to consult for Ziff Davis and may do more writing, emphasizing the unpredictable, dramatic narrative of the Gawker saga.
    • "If you're going to be in the middle of a story as juicy, epic as this, this story, every single time it's had a choice as to which turn to take, it's always taken the more interesting turn." — Nick Denton [15:12]

• Legacy & Final Reflections:

  • Despite grim industry trends, Denton expresses pride in making internet journalism more vibrant, diverse, and willing to challenge power:
    • "Journalism now is more vibrant and more diverse and everything is being discussed, everything does eventually come out." — Nick Denton [16:12]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Somebody called me in a blog post, dark Lord Balthazar, because I...suppose I was a dark lord." — Nick Denton [03:04]
• "It's a more general phenomenon that when you let everybody speak freely...not all of it is going to be what you like." — Nick Denton [06:16]
• "There's a certain amount of karmic justice...a quote by AJ [Daulerio] would similarly be taken out of context, used in the trial, and used...to hang us." — Nick Denton [13:07]
• "What more interesting billionaire secret backer could you imagine than Peter Thiel? Somebody who is trying to free himself of terrestrial government but supports Trump in the meantime..." — Nick Denton [15:12]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Gawker’s editorial values and persona [03:04–06:14]
• "When in doubt, put it out": implications and regrets [04:05–06:03]
• The ethics and impact of outing [06:59–09:19]
• Peter Thiel, Gawker, and the beginning of a vendetta [09:19–11:12]
• The Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit and media consequences [11:12–13:33]
• Gawker’s bankruptcy and the Ziff Davis sale [13:33–15:12]
• Denton’s reflections on internet journalism's legacy [16:00–16:52]

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a nuanced, reflective, and sometimes unrepentant account of the Gawker Media saga, illuminating the ethical tightropes and shifting power structures of internet-era journalism. Denton's philosophy and choices, both celebrated and reviled, offer a pointed meditation on transparency, privacy, and what’s at stake when the press and the powerful collide.

Transcript

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[David Remnick]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks to Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media. Gawker's when in doubt, put it out philosophy made it one of the most popular tabloids on the Internet and But a recent court decision has led the company to declare bankruptcy.

[Interviewer]

Now, you don't have to be an avid media nut to know that the lawsuit, Bellea v. Gawker Media, is a case that's fascinating in a kind of a salacious way, but also genuinely important. Terry Jean Bollea, the plaintiff, is also known as Hulk Hogan, the former pro wrestler and the defendant. Gawker Media is the parent company of Gawker.com, which ran an article accompanied by a video of of Hulk Hogan in bed with his friend's wife, Heather Clem. The case pitted the rights of a free press against the privacy rights of a public figure, and the judgment of $140 million against Gawker stunned everybody, even Gawker's fiercest critics. Nick Denton is the founder of Gawker Media. And he's not a typical American suit without any apology. He modeled Gawker from the start after the British tabloids with all their rudeness and half truths and sarcasm. And in the process, he antagonized a lot of people in politics in Silicon Valley and in the media itself, and he seemed to relish doing it. There was this aspect of Nick Denton as a Persona, and one of your close colleagues, AJ Delorio, in a piece in the New Yorker was quoted saying, the villain, public Persona is not 100% true. It's probably 80% true. How much and to what degree did you cultivate a pretty daunting and even scary Persona?

[Nick Denton]

That's a good question. First of all, I think that's. I'm not sure whether the 100% is a joke or the 80% is a joke. AJ Delario has gotten himself into a considerable amount of trouble with his humor over the years. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. It tends to be misinterpreted, but I think there was certainly some truth. We all take on roles and characters. Somebody called me in a blog post, dark Lord Balthazar, because I, you know, I suppose I was a dark lord.

[Interviewer]

And you hang out at Balthazar downtown.

[Nick Denton]

Restaurant, at least used to hang out in Balthazar in soho. And I think probably a little unwisely, I accepted or even embraced some of that role. Makes it a little bit easier to deal with the inevitable criticism of articles, especially from people you know or people who know people you know. If you have that reputation of somebody who puts the story first. Our impetus was always, when in doubt, put it out.

[Interviewer]

Well, let's drill on that for a second. When in doubt, put it out. Whereas at places like mine or the New York Times or the Washington Post, we've all made mistakes, God knows. But there's. That's not the rule of the road. When in doubt, put it out. Something different. But if you rush things out into the ecosystem, there's another kind of price to pay. You're wrong or you've hurt somebody's reputation very badly. Was that the right rule of the road? How do you feel about that now that It's, I guess, 14 years on since the rise of Gawker?

[Nick Denton]

Look, the example I always think of is the example of the British press and the US Press during and after the invasion of Iraq, where you had the British. British press in its usual sloppy, one.

[Interviewer]

Source, anonymous, half guessing that there might not be weapons of mass destruction.

[Nick Denton]

Yeah. The British press got to the truth in its own way, I'd say about six to 12 months before the American press.

[Interviewer]

But by and large, Gawker was not writing about weapons of mass destruction as a day to day matter.

[Nick Denton]

Sometimes it was just writing about Conde Nast internal politics.

[Interviewer]

There you go, there you go.

[Nick Denton]

But I think in a healthy media ecosystem you need a range of approaches and we made a unique thing, an independent media company which grew to scale and we have nearly 100 million people coming to the sites each month.

[Interviewer]

How many sites are there now, Nick?

[Nick Denton]

Seven sites. We write freely. It's a journalist led organization and we write stories regardless of whether an advertiser or a source or a subject will be pleased. There is a place for independent journalism. Independent, spiky, sometimes unpopular, sometimes controversial. And you know, I'm glad that we did something different. I'm glad that we allowed that journalistic aid.

[Interviewer]

Would you include in those adjectives sometimes also mean spirited, sometimes damaging to people's reputations in a way that you regret? Would you add that to the, to the litany?

[Nick Denton]

I would say absolutely that the. Under the guise of the truth and the whole truth that can, it's incredibly empowering. Sometimes a journalist can hide behind that and the snark or criticism can go over the line towards something that seems mean spirited. But it's a more general phenomenon that when you let everybody speak freely and whether you're talking about a Gorka blogger or a commenter on a Gorka article, or whether you're talking about somebody on an anonymous person on Twitter, you know, or somebody on Facebook even under their own name, that we exist in a world of an explosion of free expression and not all of it is going to be what you like.

[Interviewer]

You were asked what drives you at one point. I think it was by Time magazine and you said, maybe it was because I was gay and I grew up hating open secrets. Usually if someone's gay, it's a pretty open secret. Their friends know, their family knows, but out of some misplaced sense of decency, nobody talks about it. Generally my view is that let's just have it out. The truth will set you free. That's what I believe. Let's start with the question of outing people. The common liberal notion of this is that it should be an individual choice and when someone self identifies then that's what that's. It's their business. You think about it in a radically different way.

[Nick Denton]

I don't think actually really that radically, but here's what I know. The people who complain most about outing or are most concerned about outing tend to be straight people. I think the thing that always offended me the most was the double standard. The double standard that a newspaper or a magazine would quite happily write about someone's girlfriend on Page Six. They'd quite happily write about somebody's affair in a heterosexual context. But that same standard was not applied to gay people. As if their sex life was somehow shameful.

[Interviewer]

All the same, though, why does Nick Denton get to decide?

[Nick Denton]

I don't think I do, but if information is traveling around. Tim Cook, for instance, the CEO of Apple, widely known amongst his colleagues that he was gay, but there was a certain kind of hesitation of writing about it. Now he's obviously extremely out.

[Interviewer]

Right. He took to BusinessWeek and wrote a piece declaring this.

[Nick Denton]

Yeah, and we did a piece, I think, a couple of years beforehand, celebrating the fact that the.

[Interviewer]

But who should do the coming out? Should the press do it for someone has agency to do it. You think it's the fact. Is the fact, like anyone, like anything else, I'm wearing a blue sweater.

[Nick Denton]

Yes, it's part of somebody's biography. And I think the world is a lot healthier, with Silicon Valley's most successful venture capitalist being gay and known to be gay, and with the CEO of the most powerful tech company on the planet being gay. And for it to be clear to gay people growing up that there are other paths than becoming a hairdresser or a fashion designer, great. Those career paths, maybe.

[Interviewer]

So one person who does disagree with you became your nemesis, and that's Peter Thiel, who's a venture capitalist. And in 2006, Gawker started writing about Thiel. And in 2007, there was a post with the headline, peter Thiel is totally gay, people. And it might not have outed him. I think, as you say, a lot of people around him, apparently his friends and family knew quite well that he was gay, but it certainly broadcast his sexuality in a way like never before, and in a way that, without a question, that we now know infuriated him no end. Thus began, I don't know, known to you or not, a relationship or an antagonism that would be fateful. What was your awareness of Peter Thiel's fury at Gawker Media from the start?

[Nick Denton]

Well, first of all, I actually don't think that piece about his sexuality was particularly impactful. If you read the piece, it's a positive piece which ends with, okay, so Silicon Valley's most successful venture capitalist is gay. Fair enough, but more power to him. He was annoyed, I believe, about mockery of his political opinions.

[Interviewer]

He's a libertarian and is going to be a delegate for Trump in the coming years.

[Nick Denton]

He's a strange sort of Nietzschean libertarian who believes that mass democracy is incompatible with liberty and that society started going downhill when women and welfare recipients got the vote. That's a slight caricature of his views, but not too far from that. And, you know, he has what he considers to be serious political ideas, and we didn't treat them with a huge amount of respect, and then we covered business dealings that were inconvenient for him.

[Interviewer]

So. Nick, in 2012, Gawker runs the short clip of the Hulk Hogan sex tape, and Gawker refuses to take it down. Then you get a lawsuit, which you lost to the tune of $140 million against the company. After some speculation, Peter Thiel comes along and he admits he has a hand in this and he bankrolls Hulk Hogan's lawsuit. In Thiel's view, he's got a beef with you and he's within his rights to go after Gawker this way. It's perfectly legal. A lot of other people, including everyone who's written about it for the New Yorker, are of the feeling that a billionaire financing secret lawsuits against a media company, no matter what it's done, is an extremely dangerous trend. I get that. We get that. But how do you go about defending the Hulk Hogan sex tape in the first place?

[Nick Denton]

I believe that the Hulk Hogan story is a newsworthy story. Federal judge found it newsworthy. The appeals court has found it newsworthy. We've had a significant, a massive reverse in the Florida trial court under Judge Campbell. But it's not the end of the day.

[Interviewer]

Why do you think it went the way it did in court?

[Nick Denton]

We certainly didn't do ourselves too many favors. There was an awkward quote joke in a deposition that hurt us. Do I have to repeat it? I guess I do. AJ Delario, who was the editor of Gorka.com at the time, at the end, the of. End of a long day of his deposition, was asked what sex taste would he not publish, and made a dark New York blogger joke that a tape of a four year old would clearly not be acceptable. And that was.

[Interviewer]

That was everywhere.

[Nick Denton]

It was everywhere it was taken. You know, there's a certain amount of kind of karmic justice that journalists who are often accused of taking quotes out of context, portraying people unfairly by doing so. There's a certain amount of comic justice that a quote by AJ Would similarly be taken out of context, used in the trial, and used by the New York Post and others to hang us.

[Interviewer]

So what is the circumstance that Gawker Media finds itself in now? Where are you in terms you're now in chapter 11? It seems that you're going to be sold. How is this going to play out? Do you think.

[Nick Denton]

It'S likely that the sale will go through? We have a binding agreement with Ziff Davis, but under this process, another bidder could come in on top of the price that they've. Ziff Davis has offered $90 million for the company's business and that transaction should close in August and that will preserve the brands. There's a question about Gorka.com, but I think most of the jobs will be safeguarded and that's my top priority right now.

[Interviewer]

But new owners always say that they're gonna safeguard it. Rupert Murdoch said it when he bought the Village Voice. What's the insurance policy that that will be the case. And what will that mean?

[Nick Denton]

What will it Profitability. That's what the insurance policy is. The Gork Media Group is legal fees put aside. One of the only profitable digital media companies with about 100 people, we attract an audience which is equivalent to that of major newspaper groups. So the company is efficient. We've got one of the most successful e commerce businesses, so we're not even solely dependent on advertising.

[Interviewer]

And tell me this, what will happen with you if there's a sale? Do you stay? Do you go off to another venture?

[Nick Denton]

I will work as a consultant for Ziff Davis if their bid is successful. And I'd like to write a little. If you're going to be in the middle of a story as juicy, epic as this, this story, every single time it's had a choice as to which turn to take, it's always taken the more interesting turn. What, what more interesting billionaire secret backer could you imagine than Peter Thiel? Somebody who is trying to free himself of terrestrial government but supports Trump in the meantime and somebody who's pursuing immortality and who has a vision that he finds intoxicating. Some others would find dystopic of the future.

[Interviewer]

How do you come out of this long, complicated narrative feeling that you've won in some sense? Can you.

[Nick Denton]

I think Gorkha blogs, Internet journalism has. It's shaken things up, even though right now the mood and media is dark because it seems that celebrities and sources and the power is bypassing them and the business model looks highly questionable. But journalism is now, even with these threats to the First Amendment and free expression, journalism now is more vibrant and more diverse and everything is being discussed, everything does eventually come out.

[David Remnick]

That was Nick Denton talking to David Remnick.

[Asma Khalid]

America is changing and so is the world.

[Nick Denton]

But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Asma Khalid]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.

[Nick Denton]

Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.

[Asma Khalid]

Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.

[Nick Denton]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Interviewer]

From. PRX.