The news site Gawker.com will shut down next week, just days after its parent company was purchased by Univision.
Gawker founder Nick Denton told staff on Thursday afternoon, a post on its website said.
Media firm Univision agreed to buy Gawker Media for $135m (£103m) at a bankruptcy auction.
Gawker filed for bankruptcy after losing a $140m privacy lawsuit brought by former wrestler Hulk Hogan, paid for by Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Mr Thiel funded Mr Hogan’s case saying he wanted to curb the company’s “bullying”, after the site published an article that outed Mr Thield as gay.
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Founded 14 years ago, Gawker is known for its no-holds-bar approach to reporting, including breaking gossip stories on high-powered celebrities and business leaders.
Univision is most commonly known in the US as the country’s biggest Spanish-language media company. It also owns a 40% stake in the satirical website The Onion.
‘Losing Gawker.com hurts’
In a memo to his staff, seen by the news agency AP, Mr Denton said: “Sadly, neither I nor Gawker.com, the buccaneering flagship of the group I built with my colleagues, are coming along for this next stage.
“We have not been able to find a single media company or investor willing also to take on Gawker.com. The campaign being mounted against its editorial ethos and former writers has made it too risky. I can understand the caution.”
He added that he would move out of the news and gossip business but “work to make the web a forum for the open exchange of ideas and information”.
A US bankruptcy court later approved Univision’s purchase of Gawker Media, which owns seven websites in total.
They are: Gawker.com, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and Jezebel.
The post on Gawker’s website said plans for future …read more
Source:: BBC Entertainment
