Underneath that first paragraph is a link to another story about him headlined: "Reminder: Peter Thiel Is Ted Cruz's Gay Billionaire Ally." Named One example story, seven years later, begins: "Everyone's favorite gay libertarian hypocrite is up early this morning, and he's got big opinions: Peter Thiel just hopped on CNBC to call Twitter's executives a bunch of weed-snorting losers." It continued to relentlessly mock him and his ideas, drawing reference to the topic that most irritated him at every available opportunity. Denton later described how Thiel had threatened to bring down heaven and Earth on top of him if he wrote about his sexuality. It earned the website the unconstrained fury of the billionaire, who subsequently described Valleywag as equivalent to the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. The tabloid-style website was not exactly subtle, posting the story with the headline: "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people." He also happens to be gay: something that is of no import in the San Francisco Bay Area, but which caused his first clash with Gawker when it wrote a story back in 2007 announcing his sexuality to the world before he had a chance to go public himself. He is an official delegate for Donald Trump in a solidly democratic Valley he has encouraged teenagers to skip university and he has been a seemingly endless source of wild commentary and ideas that could almost be copied verbatim into a script of HBO satire Silicon Valley. Peter Thiel has been the target of numerous attacks by Gawker in the past, in particular in its now-defunct Valleywag offshoot.Īs a Paypal founder and early Facebook investor, Thiel is worth billions ($2.7bn in fact), but he is far from your average VC. He made his suspicions known in an interview this week, pointing a finger rather firmly in the direction of a "Silicon Valley billionaire" without naming him. That led Gawker's CEO Nick Denton to wonder whether someone else was behind the case. Increasingly, it looked as though the lawsuit's main focus was to ruin Gawker – which does not have $140m in assets and would have to declare bankruptcy if the judgement stands – rather than compensate Hogan. On top of which Hogan reportedly turned down a $10m settlement offer from Gawker to stop the case going to court. Variety first reported the news of Gawker’s relaunch.Where things grew even odder, however, was the fact that Hogan's legal team specifically dropped a part of his lawsuit that would have seen Gawker's insurance company pick up the tab.
The Columbia University journalism graduate also spent time at TPM Media and The Nation. Hale most recently served as chief revenue officer at media startup The Outline.
The Gawker assets were auctioned separately earlier this year and Thiel was reportedly among the early bidders, though a holding company owned by Goldberg ultimately acquired the property. In 2016, Denton said that the company would pay Hogan $31 million.Īs part of Gawker’s bankruptcy, the company auctioned its non-Gawker assets, including blogs Gizmodo, Jezebel and Deadspin, for $135 million to Univision. Hogan was ultimately awarded $140 million in compensatory and punitive damages. It was later revealed that the lawsuit was backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Gawker, which made a name for itself with provocative coverage of the New York media world, was sued by Hogan for publishing an excerpt of a sex tape.
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