--- title: What It Was Like to Work for Gawker Media in Its Heyday description: Gawker.com, the eponymous site of Gawker Media, shut down Monday, following the sale of the sale of the 14-year-old media company. canonical: https://time.com/4463187/gawker-media-heyday/ author: IDEAS Desk article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-23T18:30:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T00:09:14.842Z article:section: Ideas og:title: What It Was Like to Work for Gawker Media in Its Heyday og:description: 'There was no better way to get ahead there than by publishing a big scoop' og:url: https://time.com/4463187/gawker-media-heyday/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdeda995c1732a764/6988a362a988ca37336b92b7/nick-denton1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Nick Denton of Gawker is a guest on "Good Morning America" on March 24, 2016. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What It Was Like to Work for Gawker Media in Its Heyday twitter:description: 'There was no better way to get ahead there than by publishing a big scoop' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdeda995c1732a764/6988a362a988ca37336b92b7/nick-denton1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What It Was Like to Work for Gawker Media in Its Heyday > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [IDEAS Desk](https://time.com/author/ideas-desk/) ## IDEAS Desk Aug 23, 2016 6:30 PM UTC  Nick Denton of Gawker is a guest on "Good Morning America" on March 24, 2016. Nick Denton of Gawker is a guest on "Good Morning America" on March 24, 2016. Fred Lee—ABC via Getty Images by [IDEAS Desk](https://time.com/author/ideas-desk/) ## IDEAS Desk Aug 23, 2016 6:30 PM UTC Gawker.com, the eponymous flagship site of Gawker Media, shut down Monday, following the sale of the sale of the 14-year-old media company to Univision for $135 million in a bankruptcy auction last week. “It is the end of an era,” site founder Nick Denton wrote in a [farewell post](http://gawker.com/how-things-work-1785604699). The sale of the company and the shut down of Gawker.com was caused in large part by losing a [$140 million invastion-of-privacy lawsuit](http://fortune.com/2016/05/25/hogan-gawker-appeal/) to Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea in March. It was later revealed that billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel had helped [fund](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html) the lawsuit. “In cultural and business terms, this is an act of destruction, because Gawker.com was a popular and profitable digital media property—before the legal bills mounted,” Denton wrote. “Gawker will be missed. But in dramatic terms, it is a fitting conclusion to this experiment in what happens when you let journalists say what they really think.” In an [article](http://time.com/4455508/gawker-univision-bankruptcy-sale-independent-media/) last week, TIME writer Jack Dickey wrote the following about his experience working for Deadspin, Gawker Media’s still-operating sports site. --- > “” --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4463187/gawker-media-heyday/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4463187/gawker-media-heyday/"},"headline":"What It Was Like to Work for Gawker Media in Its Heyday","datePublished":"2016-08-23T18:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T00:09:14.842Z","description":"'There was no better way to get ahead there than by publishing a big scoop, one that upset powerful people'","url":"https://time.com/4463187/gawker-media-heyday/","keywords":["Media"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdeda995c1732a764/6988a362a988ca37336b92b7/nick-denton1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"IDEAS Desk","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ideas-desk/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdeda995c1732a764/6988a362a988ca37336b92b7/nick-denton1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Nick Denton of Gawker is a guest on \"Good Morning America\" on March 24, 2016.","caption":"Nick Denton of Gawker is a guest on \"Good Morning America\" on March 24, 2016.","creditText":"Fred Lee—ABC via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/media/","name":"Media"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4463187/gawker-media-heyday/","name":"What It Was Like to Work for Gawker Media in Its Heyday"}}]}] ```