Translated material
Radical transparency
The publication about Gawker scandals went against its principles: The New York Times
On July 20, a popular American site about gossip, scandals and all in the world Gawker lost two leaders: Gawker Media Executive Editor Tommy Crags and chief editor of the site Max Reed in protest against the arbitrariness of the owners of the publication. The reason was too scandalous even for Gawker material about homosexuality and intimate leisure of the top manager of the publishing house Conde Nast, which the founders of the site decided to remove from the publication without asking the editorial office. The New York Times tells how the site about the scandals itself ended up in the center of the scandal, and what all this means.
The Gawker blog was founded in 2002 by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spears. Denton is the main owner of a popular site, his family belongs to 68% of the publication. Gawker is known for scandalous publications about celebrities and participation in trials; His mission is “bring the truth to the Internet.” Gawker is quite successful: the Gawker Media holding, which it includes, earns up to $ 45 million a year, and net profit is about $ 7 million. 13 years ago, two people who wrote on a blog in their free time were working on Gawker, now 260 people have.
Gawker has always remained a kind of bastion of the “free Internet”, where there is no censorship-the site published scandalous sex video celebrities, the hacked correspondence of Sarah Palein and other things that usually appear on the pages of tabloids. Gawker concept - to publish everything that is true and interesting.
On July 16, Gawker printed an article on the correspondence of the Gay Porno star with one of the top managers of the Publishing House of Conde Nast. It followed from the correspondence that the entrepreneur-a married man-was going to pay $ 2500 for gay escort. The article was read almost half a million times, it caused a storm of emotions - mostly negative ones. According to the critics of Gawker, the publication in this material did not report anything important, but only revealed the personal secrets of a particular person, publicly in homosexuality not recognized.
The owner of Gawker Nick Denton knew about the preparation of the article. In a conversation with the editor -in -chief of Gawker, Mark Reed, he expressed doubt that the material will turn out (“I can’t imagine a title and I can’t understand why this. What did it become?”), But he did not ask for the text for a clearing and did not interfere in the work of the editorial office.
But the next day, Denton was convened by the Council of Management Partners, on which an almost unanimous decision was made to delete the material. At the same time, Mark Reid, the only representative of the Gawker editorial office in the Council - flew at the time of voting on an airplane. As a result, Gawker for the first time in his history deleted the material not by court decision or not because of the actual errors, which led to the conflict between the owners and the editors.
According to Nick Denton, the article was true - and could stay on the site in the last years, but not now. “The situation in the media has changed, readers have changed, I have changed,” the creator of Gawker explained and noted that now the articles should not only be true, but also tell something important.
“Removing this entry is a complete defeat Gawker in its desire for“ radical transparency ”. A situation where people who are not related to the editorial office vote for the decision to remove the article, is unacceptable and is an unprecedented violation of immunity; It turns the Gawker status as the world's largest independent media in a mockery, ”the editor -in -chief of Gawker Mark Reid reacted to delete the material and quit. Together with him, the executive editor of the Gawker Media holding Tommy Crags also left.
According to many other Gawker employees, the scandalous recording was no different from the materials that came out in the publication invented by Nickname Denton at the beginning of the zero. On his pages, Denton once defended the right to publish truthful materials, regardless of their social significance and the harm that they can do.
Denton confirmed that this time he was guided by business interests-according to him, if the material remained on the site, the company would have received seven-digit losses from the loss of advertising contracts. And Gawker’s money is needed-the company recently moves to an expensive office in Manhattan, and also waits for a decision on a 100-million-dollar lawsuit from Halk Hogan in the case of a wrestler’s treason.
On Monday, in a letter to the editors of Gawker, he [Nick Denton] spoke differently. “I am ashamed that my name and Gawker are connected with this story about the private life of gay, who did not talk about his orientation and, as many believe, did not do anything to attract attention,” he wrote.