I, like many of you, have been watching as Hulk Hogan has beat down Gawker for the POS brown journalism entity that it is. We all like to see evil people lose. We all like to see the likes of Nick Denton see their empires collapse. And we all like to see some semblance of justice and sanity prevail in today's society.
But while we can cheer, the question is will Gawker finally go away?
Mathematically, yes. Gawker will go away. With revenues of $45 million and a a lawsuit, even when paired down, will wipe them out financially, you can safely say Gawker will die as a financially solvent entity. But there are some problems, and this introduces the world of finance.
Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker has a net worth estimated to be $100 million. Of course a lot of that is tied up in the ever decreasing stock of Gawker, and lord knows what other genuine liquid and veritable assets that networth is tied up in, but Nick is a rather well to do man. There is also the issue of outside interests who just view Gawker not as a viable business entity, but merely a smear engine/tool in which case (like I predict Twitter will become) a money losing operation to be used and financed by political forces. Twitter is not viable. Gawker is not viable. But who cares as long as billionaire politicians and crony capitalists will constantly fund their bleeding balance sheets to basically be a press-releasing operation for their political goals. ie - Twitter and Gawker may be bankrupt a million times over, but who cares? They're merely an expense account for political/financial backers to propagate whatever propaganda they desire.
And that is why we need to identify Gawker (and inevitably Twitter) for what it is (and will become).
A money losing media arm of evil political forces.
Look, Gawker was going to lose in the end anyway. Being the biggest and most complete douche of the internet world will not win you any friends in the long run.
Click bait?
Yes.
Traffic in the short term?
Yes.
But a long term viable entity?
No.
But the value Gawker does deliver is a bersmirching/slander tool that can constantly be sued (and filed for bankruptcy, repeatedly) while convincing the ignorant sheeple masses that "X" person is a very very bad man as their attention spans are as long as Nick Denton's dick. That expendable entity DOES have value for politicians.
In short, Gawker will go away, but not the business model and not Nick Denton. There will always be demand for smut, gossip, and character assassination. And there are deep pocket political interests that will always want to hire the cowardly mercenary pussies like Nick Denton to do their character assassinations for them. The real issue is whether society will wake up and realize the Nick Dentons of the world for who they are, or continue to sop up the juicy lies they sell. And if my experience has told me anything the sheeple will always side with the Nick Dentons of the world.
In other words, Nick Denton and Gawker may be bankrupt, but their industry is infinitely more solid and secure than social security. He won't go away and you will see him again. And it's nobody's fault but society's. And frankly, I can't blame him when he returns and makes a mint off of the lemmings that made a disgusting and pathetic business concept like Gawker a viable business entity in the first place. He'll just have a new and improved version of Gawker that will be swallowed whole by society. And thus, Gawker's financial statements really don't matter, because he has the best finances anybody could ever ask for.
Society's vanity.
2 comments:
Yes and no, Captain.
I was a youngster and you were probably a pup when the National Enquirer discovered that lawsuits were great revenue generators. If I remember they libelled Carol Burnette and she sued the pants off them. They found that even after the enormous settlement - the resulting publicity and ratings went through the roof.
They began slandering anyone they thought that could drive similar copy sales and made huge profits doing it. Libel and slander became big business for them.
Consider this case. The loss in court destroyed the company. The people involved will be radioactive and will never work in the industry again. When or if he tries to re-start: would you go work for him, knowing that he might order you to run a hit piece on somebody he hates - and then take the fall for it? Gawker's owners will certainly survive...but they took a shit kicking here, and no bones about it. Another debacle like this and they WILL be out of business. Slander and libel are very dangerous markets to trade in and make for very, very poor investments.
A message has been sent to America's media: no, you are not members of the noble class, and America is getting heartily sick of your antics and abuses. I expect more like this to follow. Only idiots want the media to be an echo chamber, Cap. Most people with triple digit IQ's have a vested interest in reality and accurate information.
Just my two bits, your mileage may vary.
One of the other problems with Gawker is their platform. I enjoy Jalopnik and IO9, but the Gawker sites are brutally unfriendly for iPads, which tells me they're trying to be too clever just because they can. It's an extra layer of unnecessary complexity.
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