Nobody Speak (official trailer)

Man. I need to watch this. It's essentially a documentary about Hulk Hogan vs Gawker and the larger problem of the very rich in this country essentially suing the press into oblivion. Now more important than ever.

PS: I miss Gawker. I wonder sometimes what sort of insanity they would be unleashing during this Trump era.

A list of websites to replace Gawker

By now, it's no secret that I miss Gawker. This post isn't being made to justify my thoughts about why the site was important in this age (you can read those in my previous Gawker goodbye posts), it's instead being made to make a list of sites I've found myself visiting more now that Gawker is gone.

So if you're in the same boat as me, maybe you'll find that visiting one or all of these following sites somehow fills the void that Gawker has left. No single site though stands out as a clear replacement which really kind of bums me out. But onto the future I guess...!

1. Vox - Beautiful to browse and often filled with similar Gawker-like stories, minus the real garbage I suppose. Polished, if you will.
2. Digg - Yes, this is technically a news aggregator, but unlike Reddit which is [supposedly] strictly driven by users' upvotes, Digg has a frontpage that is actually curated/edited by people which means less silly stuff and more actual news. The downside? Less silly stuff.
3. Concourse - Technically a subdomain of Deadspin, this site is probably the closest thing to the old Gawker that I am reading at the moment (Deadspin was a part of Gawker Media before being sold to Univision).

The front-page of Gawker today makes me sad

In case you missed it, after today, Gawker.com will cease operations. It is the ending to a very long legal battle that bankrupted the site and its owner.

While historians and archivists race against the clock to save the site from disappearing altogether, the rest of us are left to read the many tributes and articles streaming onto its front page. It truly is a mixed bag. Both love, hate, disgust, amazement, and history being recounted as we speak on that front page. If you've been reading blogs for the past decade online, there's at least some part of blogging culture and news media that was directly influenced by this site (either through writing style, headline baiting, or just pure crass). I didn't agree with most of what this site did, but their insistence on being the rare un-edited version of news and opinion made them a notable figure that will be missed.

Why saving the Gawker archive is important

Hate it or love it, Gawker was a force to be reckoned with during its 14-year run. It had enemies and friends on all sides of every issue which was unusual because of their stance on just about anything being worth its weight in tabloid gold.

So with it's demise coming next week, a lot of talk lately has been surrounding what to do with the Gawker archive and how exactly to save it. Even if you absolutely hate Gawker, as a journalistic piece of history, it's still worth saving to show others how we got to here.

I've been following this story closely and so far nobody has come forward with a way to archive the entire site. I hope that happens though before it goes dark.

Gawker Had to Die This Way

Gawker.com to end operations next week

Wow. I didn't think it would come this soon after the bankruptcy declaration. If you haven't heard, Univision now owns Gawker Media and has set in motion a plan to shut Gawker.com down by next week. Its other sites will, for now, remain in operation.