Goodbye, Gawker.
Body-slammed into bankruptcy by Hulk Hogan’s $140 million invasion of privacy jury verdict, Nick Denton’s snarky gossip website will stop publishing next week, the site announced Thursday.
“After nearly 14 years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down,” as of Monday, the website posted.
Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, was quick to tweet out: “They messed with the wrong guy brother.”
In pulling the plug, Denton is left owning only the name “Gawker.com,” and the site’s 14 years of archives — an asset he conceded that nobody wants.
Denton sold the site’s umbrella company, Gawker Media Group — which publishes six other websites, including Gizmodo, Jezebel and Deadspin — to Univision for $135 million this week in a deal approved by a bankruptcy judge later Thursday.
“Sadly, neither I nor Gawker.com, the buccaneering flagship of the group I built with my colleagues, are coming along for this next stage,” Denton said in a memo to staffers.
“Desirable though the other properties are, we have not been able to find a single media company or investor willing also to take on Gawker.com.”
Instead, the site had been “mothballed, until the smoke clears and a new owner can be found,” he said.
“Gawker.com may, like Spy Magazine in its day, have a second act,” he wrote staffers.
Under the sale, Univision must retain 95 percent of Gawker Media’s staff, Denton’s lawyers said in court.
Still, staffers are fleeing.
Given the shuttering of Gawker.com and Denton’s bankruptcy, “Any uncertainty creates concern,” testified Reid Snellenbarger, managing director at Houlihan Lokey, which helped facilitate the Univision sale.
“The employees want comfort,” he said at Thursday’s bankruptcy hearing, urging Judge Stuart Bernstein to quickly approve the Univision sale.
Asked if there has been concern about employees leaving, Snellenbarger testified, “There has.”
The $135 million cash purchase price will now go into an escrow account, from which Denton’s creditors will be paid, top among them Hogan, who still gets no money until Denton completes an appeal.
But should Denton win a reversal or a reduction in the payout, he could always restart Gawker.com with whatever cash he has leftover.
“Nick could bring it back to life,” providing he abides by a non-compete clause in the sale, one observer told The Post.
“[Gawker.com] remains in limbo in the bankrupt estate pending the outcome of litigation. If a buyer emerges, though that’s unlikely, it could [also] be sold.”
In announcing its own demise, Gawker.com took a death-throes snipe at the man Denton holds responsible: Peter Thiel.
“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,” the website said.
More than 10 years ago, Denton outed Thiel as gay on the now-defunct website Valleywag. The conservative venture capitalist has since poured $10 million into third-party lawsuits against the site, almost all of that funding the Hogan litigation.
With Thiel footing the bill, Hogan sued Gawker for posting a video of the entertainer having sex with the then-wife of his former friend, Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.
The Post reported earlier this week that the flagship site likely would cease operations because neither of the two bidders, including Ziff Davis, wanted to take possession of the “toxic” asset.
Ziff Davis had initially made a “stalking horse” bid of $90 million, and this week bid $131 million for Gawker Media as one of 63 bidders participating in the auction, ultimately falling $4 million short of Univision’s successful offer.