When people realize they work for a real company, they start to have certain expectations. They all start out really small and sort of boot-strappy, and then you wake up one day and you’re like, “Wow, - look at this fuckin’ office! What happened?” They go from working in a bedroom to being a real company. It was pretty standard workplace communication stuff, probably similar to a lot of these digital media companies.
Workplace communication stuff might be hearing about what corporate decisions are being made, when they’re being discussed, and not having things just drop down on your head. To discuss how their union is helping to shape life after the Univision buyout, Jacobin’s Jason Farbman spoke with Hamilton Nolan, senior writer at Deadspin, and Megan McRobert, an organizer at the Writers Guild of America. (This week, however, management announced layoffs.) At, another site owned by Univision, 100 percent of the editorial staff recently signed union cards legal news site Law360 also recently unionized. Over that same period, several other media companies also unionized, including Univision-owned which, despite management’s anti-union campaign management, saw over 90 percent of Fusion’s seventy-member bargaining unit vote to unionize. The union criticized the deletions “ in the strongest possible terms.” News reports indicated early clashes between new management and workers over liability protection for authors and for Univision’s decision to delete half a dozen posts deemed too controversial, but which the staff considered well-reported and accurate. Immediately after the purchase, Univision dropped the Gawker name and website, and changed the umbrella group’s name to Gizmodo Media. They’re held more accountable for their actions.” “When you get into bigger and bigger companies, they impose more rules. “The bankruptcy and the lawsuit were the end of Gawker as we knew it,” predicted one observer. The company was put up for auction, and after media giant Univision bought it, many assumed Gawker was dead. In the year since employees unionized, Gawker Media - which included its flagship site Gawker Gizmodo, Deadspin, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker, and Jalopnik - was very publicly bankrupted by a lawsuit financed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel. When employees first very visibly announced their union drive, they made clear that they wanted to inspire others, in online media and beyond, to organize, too. was not the first online outlet to unionize, but it was certainly the most public. If nothing else, media wonks will continue to talk about Peter Thiel's decisive financial and legal retribution against the site, and the precedents it could set for independent journalism that deals with people in power.Gawker Media, Inc. Gawker might soon go dark, but the conversations it sparked will live on. The rest of Gawker's network could bring plenty of new eyeballs to Univision's advertisers, but 's reputation was likely considered too toxic to salvage by its new corporate overlords. What's more, the question of Gawker's continued existence hung over the entire process - Univision has been steadily growing its online assets by acquiring satire site The Onion and The Root, an online magazine dedicated to African-American culture. A New York bankruptcy court will pass judgment on the offer later today, and after that, the $135 million will hang in the air while Gawker Media appeals the verdict of its case against Hulk Hogan.
Speaking of things that haven't been finalized, the fate of Univision's deal hasn't been set in stone yet either. "The near-term plans for 's coverage, as well as the site's archives," Trotter mentions, "have not yet been finalized." The announcement comes on the heels of Univision's $135 million bid for Gawker Media's network of websites, which also includes Kotaku, Lifehacker, Deadspin, Jalopnik, Jezebel and our friendly rival Gizmodo.Īt this point, we don't know what Gawker's online legacy will look like. Gawker Media's long, strange legal battle is done, and so is - reporter JK Trotter just confirmed that the site is set to cease operations next week, after 14 years of snarking up every possible tree.
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