filed for united states chapter 11 bankruptcy protection ; acquired by univision communications ; renamed founded january 2003 ; 13 years ago january 2003 key people raju narisetti ceo gizmodo group nick denton founder elizabeth spiers founder gawker.com gina trapani founder lifehacker revenue us 45 million 2014 1 parent univision communications 2016 present 2 subsidiaries gawker.com deadspin lifehacker gizmodo kotaku io9 jalopnik and jezebel website advertising.gawker.com gizmodo media group previously gawker media is an online media company and blog network . it was originally founded and owned by nick denton and based in new york city . incorporated in the cayman islands 3 as of 2012 gawker media was the parent company for seven different weblogs and many subsites under them gawker.com deadspin lifehacker gizmodo kotaku jalopnik and jezebel . all gawker articles are licensed on a creative commons attribution noncommercial license . 4 in 2016 the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 5 as a direct result of the monetary judgement against the company related to the hulk hogan sex tape lawsuit . 6 on august 16 2016 gawker and all its brands were acquired at auction by univision communications . 2 two days later on august 18 the company announced that gawker.com would cease operations the following week while its other sites will continue to operate . 7 as of september 21 2016 the assets are now owned by univision communications and have been renamed to gizmodo media group . 8 9 contents 1 ownership finances and traffic 2 history 2.1 sourcecode breach 2.2 2011 redesign and traffic loss 2.3 leaked quentin tarantino script 2.4 collective action 2.5 unionizing 2.6 cond nast executive prostitution claims 2.7 daily mail defamation lawsuit 2.8 hulk hogan sex tape 2.9 teresa thomas lawsuit 2.10 2016 chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 2.11 asset seizure 2.12 univision communications acquisition and subsidiary era 2016 present 3 list of gizmodo media blogs 3.1 current blogs 3.2 international sites 3.3 blogs previously operated by gizmodo media 4 see also 5 references 6 external links ownership finances and traffic edit while denton has generally not gone into detail over gawker media s finances he made statements in 2005 that downplayed the profit potential of blogs 10 declaring that b logs are likely to be better for readers than for capitalists . while i love the medium i ve always been skeptical about the value of blogs as businesses on his personal site . 11 in an article in the february 20 2006 issue of new york magazine jossip founder david hauslaib estimated gawker.com s annual advertising revenue to be at least 1 million and possibly over 2 million a year . 12 combined with low operating costs mostly web hosting fees and writer salaries denton was believed to be turning a healthy profit by 2006 . 13 in 2015 gawker media llc released its audited revenue for the past five years . 14 in 2010 its revenue was 20 million and operating income of 2.6 million . 14 gawker media s revenues steadily increased through 2014 and its audited revenue for 2014 was 45 million with 6.5 million operating income . 14 business insider valued the company at 250 million based upon its 2014 revenue . 15 in early 2015 denton stated that he planned to raise 15 million in debt from various banks so as not to dilute his equity stake in the company by accepting investments from venture capital firms . 15 in june 2016 gawker media revealed its corporate finances in a motion for a stay of judgment pending appeal and accompanying affidavits filed in the bollea v. gawker case in florida state court . in the filings the company stated that it could not afford to pay the 140.1 million judgment or the 50 million appeal bond . 16 the company s balance sheet at the time reflected total assets of 33.8 million 5.3 million cash 11.9 million accounts receivable 12.5 million fixed assets total current liabilities of 27.7 million ; and total long term liabilities of 22.8 million . 16 a bond broker stated in an affidavit that the company s book value was 10 million . 16 in june 2016 at the time of the company s filing for bankruptcy denton had a 29.52 % stake in the gawker media group and his family had another stake through a trust . 16 history edit gawker media was originally incorporated in budapest hungary where a small company facility is still when maintained . the company was headquartered early on at nick denton s personal residence in the new york neighborhood of soho and it remained there until 2008 . that year he created a new base of operations in nolita in manhattan . 17 on april 14 2008 gawker.com announced that gawker media had sold three sites idolator gridskipper and wonkette . 18 in a fall 2008 memo denton announced the layoff of 19 of our 133 editorial positions at valleywag consumerist fleshbot and other sites and the hiring of 10 new employees for the most commercially successful sites gizmodo kotaku lifehacker and gawker and others which were deemed to promise similar commercial success jezebel io9 deadspin and jalopnik . 19 denton also announced the suspension of a bonus payment scheme based on pageviews by which gawker had paid 50 000 a month on the average to its staff citing a need to generate advertising revenue as opposed to increasing traffic . he explained these decisions by referring to the 2008 credit crisis but stated that the company was still profitable . 19 in september 2008 gawker reported 274 million pageviews . 19 on november 12 2008 gawker announced that valleywag would fold into gawker.com . the consumerist was sold to consumers union which took over the site on january 1 2009 . 20 on february 22 2009 gawker announced that defamer.com would fold into gawker.com . 21 in october 2009 gawker media websites were infected with malware in the form of fake suzuki advertisements . the exploits infected unprotected users with spyware and crashed infected computer s browsers . the network apologized by stating sorry about that . our ad sales team fell for a malware scam . sorry if it crashed your computer . 22 gawker shared the correspondence between the scammers and gawker via business insider . 23 on february 15 2010 gawker announced it had acquired cityfile an online directory of celebrities and media personalities . gawker s editor in chief gabriel snyder announced that he was being replaced by cityfile editor remy stern . 24 sourcecode breach edit on december 11 2010 the gawker group s 1.3 million commenter accounts and their entire website source code was released by a hacker group named gnosis . 25 26 gawker issued an advisory notice stating our user databases appear to have been compromised . the passwords were encrypted . but simple ones may be vulnerable to a brute force attack . you should change your gawker password and on any other sites on which you ve used the same passwords . 27 gawker was found to be using des based crypt 3 password hashes with 12 bits of salt . 28 security researchers found that password cracking software john the ripper was able to quickly crack over 50 % of the passwords from those records with crackable password hashes . 28 followers of twitter accounts set up with the same email and password were spammed with advertisements . 29 the gnosis group notes that with the source code to the gawker content management system they obtained it will be easier to develop new exploits . 30 2011 redesign and traffic loss edit as part of a planned overhaul of all gawker media sites 31 32 on 1 february 2011 some gawker sites underwent a major design change as part of the larger roll out . most notable was the absence of heretofore present twitter and stumbleupon sharing buttons . nick denton explained that facebook had been by far the biggest contributor to the sites traffic and that the other buttons cluttered the interface . 33 this decision lasted three weeks after which the buttons were reinstated and more added . 34 on 7 february 2011 the redesign was rolled out to the remainder of the gawker sites . the launch was troubled due to server issues . 35 36 kotaku.com and io9.com failed to load displaying links but no main content and opening different posts in different tabs did not work either . 37 the new look emphasised images and de emphasised the reverse chronological ordering of posts that was typical of blogs . the biggest change was the two panel layout consisting of one big story and a list of headlines on the right . this was seen as an effort to increase the engagement of site visitors by making the user experience more like that of television . 38 the site redesign also allowed for users to create their own discussion pages on gawker s kinja . 39 many commenters largely disliked the new design which was in part attributed to lack of familiarity . 36 40 rex sorgatz designer of mediaite and cmo of vyou issued a bet that the redesigns would fail to bring in traffic and nick denton took him up on it . the measure was the number of page views by october recorded on quantcast . 41 42 page views after the redesign declined significantly gawker s sites had an 80 % decrease in overall traffic immediately after the change 43 and a 50 % decrease over two weeks 44 45 with many users either leaving the site or viewing international versions of the site which hadn t switched to the new layout . 46 on 28 february 2011 faced with declining traffic gawker sites allowed for visitors to choose between the new design and the old design for viewing the sites . 47 48 sorgatz was eventually determined to be the winner of the bet as at the end of september 2011 gawker had only 500 million monthly views not the 510 million it had had prior to the redesign . however on 5 october 2011 site traffic returned to its pre redesign numbers 49 and as of february 2012 site traffic had increased by 10 million over the previous year according to quantcast . 50 as of march 23 2012 commenting on any gawker site required signing in with a twitter facebook or google account . 51 leaked quentin tarantino script edit in january 2014 quentin tarantino filed a copyright lawsuit against gawker media for distribution of his 146 page script for the hateful eight . he claimed to have given the script to six trusted colleagues including bruce dern tim roth and michael madsen . 52 53 due to the spreading of his script tarantino told the media that he would not continue with the movie . gawker media has made a business of predatory journalism violating people s rights to make a buck tarantino said in his lawsuit . this time they went too far . rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that plaintiff s screenplay may have been circulating in hollywood without his permission gawker media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally . 54 55 56 collective action edit on 22 june 2013 unpaid interns brought a fair labor standards act action against gawker media and founder nick denton . 57 58 as plaintiffs the interns claimed that their work at sites io9.com kotaku.com lifehacker.com and gawker.tv was central to gawker s business model as an internet publisher and that gawker s failure to pay them minimum wage for their work therefore violated the flsa and state labor laws . although some interns had been paid the court granted conditional certification of the collective action . 59 60 in october 2014 a