Media Tag

Univision has decided to end production at Gawker after they bought the company for $135 million at an auction. Reporter J.K. Trotter wrote:

After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week. The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, and four months after the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed his clandestine legal campaign against the company.

Newspapers continue to drop paywalls as more people aren't willing to pay for a digital subscription, especially since so many others other free content. The AFP reports:

Newspapers in the English-speaking world ended paywalls some 69 times through May 2015, including 41 temporary and 28 permanent drops, according to a study by University of Southern California researchers.

Former Fox New host Gretchen Carlson has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes, the company's chairman and CEO. She claims he fired her after "she complained about a hostile working environment" and refused to sleep with Ailes. https://twitter.com/mlcalderone/status/750711599598632960

Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy protection due to the $140 million verdict to Hulk Hogan after they published a video of him having sex with his best friend's wife. I saw people celebrating the bankruptcy news, but this action allows Gawker to delay any payment to Hogan. The bankruptcy also allows the company "to continue operating and paying its staff" with a $22 million loan. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy claim actually puts Gawker under federal protection so they can reorganize and pay their debts:

Under Chapter 11, a debtor can restructure its finances through a plan of reorganization approved by the bankruptcy court. By reducing obligations and modifying payment terms, a Chapter 11 plan can help a debtor balance its income and expenses, regain profitability, and continue in operation. Under Chapter 11, a debtor also can sell some or all of its assets so it can downsize its business if necessary or pay down claims that it owes.

The company "listed estimated assets of $50 million to $100 million and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million." Gawker includes Deadspin and Jezebel.

Newspapers face a range of problems from loss of public trust to loss of print readership to bankruptcy and collapse to transitioning to digital journalism.  The newspaper industry has lumbered, sometimes grudgingly, into the digital age and is still experimenting with ways to remain financially viable: web subscriptions (i.e. pay walls) and advertising are among the primary sources of online revenue. Online advertising, however, is not as viable as it might be for the newspaper industry due, they argue, to ad-blockers, and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has taken note.  The NAA, according to its website, is "a nonprofit organization representing nearly 2,000 newspapers and their multiplatform businesses in the United States and Canada. NAA members include daily newspapers, as well as nondailies, other print publications and online products." The Washington Post reports that the NAA has filed a federal suit against the ad blocking industry, "alleging that software companies which enable users to block ads are misleading the public."

The complaint asks the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the government agency that oversees trade practices, to investigate ad blockers that offer “paid whitelisting,” – a service which charges advertisers to bypass ad-blocking software – along with services that substitute ad blockers’ own advertising for blocked ads or get around publishers’ subscription pages.