Gawker Almost Shocks Itself to Death

Gawker was never going to make it. This is the site, remember, that once thought it a swell idea to help its followers find the personal telephone numbers of members of Sarah Palin’s family.1465689604971 Or that a decade ago introduced the creepy Gawker Stalker map, to “visually pinpoint the location of every stalkworthy celebrity as soon as they’re spotted.” Or that seems to think that outing as gay an unknown and heterosexually married magazine editor would be great fun. No wonder Gawker’s then-editor confessed nine years ago: “Not a week goes by I don’t want to quit this job, because staring at New York this way makes me sick.”

This past week the site’s proprietor, Gawker Media, filed for bankruptcy and put itself up for sale. The proximate cause was the refusal of a Florida judge to stay enforcement of a jury’s $140 million verdict in the invasion of privacy lawsuit by the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan. But what really brought the site down was its desperate need to stay ahead of the manic forces that had created it.