Rieder: The downside of Gawker.com's death

Money talks. Sometimes louder than speech.

That's the sad lesson of the demise of Gawker.com.

The end of Gawker.com, the flagship site of Gawker Media, was announced Thursday, the fallout of a bitter legal battle. The cause of death: a rich guy with a grudge, a grudge he had held a very long time and was willing — no, eager — to dip into his deep pockets to avenge.

Says media lawyer Charles Tobin: "The outcome of the Gawker case is a real hard slap (to the First Amendment) from the judicial system. And it’s troubling."

Gawker.com to shut down next week

Make no mistake, Gawker.com, in many ways an influential digital initiative that did some fine work, had a very dark side. Its excesses were cruel and truly appalling. It seemed utterly lacking in humanity. At its worst it brought to mind Joseph Welch's comment to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency?"

But free speech isn't always pretty. It can be messy. And the idea of a wealthy individual being able to shut down an independent voice via a third-party lawsuit is deeply distressing.

There's no doubt the rich guy with a grudge, Silicon Valley billionaire, PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, had every right to be furious.

In 2007, Gawker.com's sister site Valleywag published an article outing Thiel. Its headline: “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.”

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. It took years, but Thiel found an opening. After Gawker.com ran a snippet of a sex tape starring former wrestler and reality TV star Hulk Hogan and the wife of a friend, Thiel pounced. He financed Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media, one that led to a $140.1 million invasion of privacy judgment against Gawker and bankruptcy for both the company and its founder, Nick Denton.

Gawker Media, which included seven blogs, was sold at auction Tuesday night to Univision. But on Thursday came news that its best-known blog and namesake was going under.

Gawker sold to Univision for $135M in bankruptcy auction

Gawker.com started out in 2003 as a blog focusing on the predilections of the rich and famous in New York.  It quickly became known for its no-holds-barred reporting style, for gleefully embarrassing prime timers. It was snark run amok. But over time it broadened its role and produced some excellent enterprise, reporting on such subjects as Silk Road, the drug black market on the dark Web, and on the crack-smoking adventures of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford. It also was the incubator for a great deal of young journalistic talent.

As its first editor, Elizabeth Spiers says, "There have been so many incarnations of Gawker,"

But it continued to be plagued by its keyhole-peeping ways. In 2015, it published a story that vividly illustrated the worst of Gawker, one on a little-known media executive who had solicited gay sex from a male porn actor.

The article provoked an uproar, and Denton did something very unusual: He repudiated the article and took it down. "The media environment has changed, our readers have changed, and I have changed," he wrote, and added, "I believe this public mood reflects a growing recognition that we all have secrets, and they are not all equally worthy of exposure."

Rieder: Gawker chief unlikely champion of media ethics

From now on, he vowed, Gawker would be different.

But it was too late. The Hogan suit was moving forward irrevocably, and its denouement meant Denton would lose his company and his signature publication would go away.

That Gawker.com was a victim of its own misdeeds is indisputable. But the idea of wealthy people being able to squash publications they detest should give comfort to no one who cares about free speech, no matter what they think of said publication.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rem Rieder on  Twitter @remrieder