Don’t Give Gawker Your Money
At the crossroads of journalism and profiteering stands Gawker Media.
If you haven’t followed the story, let me catch you up. A pair of shady characters allegedly caught Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack on camera. These amateur producers offered the scoop to two sources—one of which was Gawker Media—for a cool sum of $200,000.
A Gawker journalist flew to Toronto, where he saw the video firsthand. Two Toronto Star writers also got a chance to preview the video’s content. No one wanted to put up the cash. Everyone thinks the video is authentic.
Notorious for breaking with traditional journalistic standards, Gawker ran an article describing the video. Artful storytelling? Yes. Moral ambiguity? Also yes. The article caught fire, becoming an overnight viral sensation.
People cared. Gawker profited. It looked like this was a bigger scoop than they’d thought. So they had an idea: Crowdfund the $200,000 necessary to purchase the video through Indiegogo. They call this plan “Crackstarter.”
Gawker Media gets nearly 50 million unique global visitors a month. Gawker owner Nick Denton is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And Gawker stands to make a whole lot more than $200k on this scoop.
Not to mention the thousands of dollars they’re making in ad revenue for every post they’ve created to support the Crackstarter.
You’re telling me Gawker has to ask their readers to scrape together two dimes? Something doesn’t track here. As Guardian blogger Tom McCarthy so eloquently put it,
“David Karp farts $200,000. Jonah Peretti just pulled $200,000 out from behind [Rupert Murdoch’s] ear. Nick Denton needs to pass the hat?”
As of this writing, Gawker has reached their goal.
There’s only one problem.
The crack-squad over at Gawker now says they haven’t been in touch with their sources for over a week. And why have their sources disappeared? Because they ran a goddamn article implicating them in essentially blackmailing the mayor of Toronto.
This entire story is profiteering heaped on idiocy piled on exploitation, topped off with a dash of lunacy.
Don’t worry. They built a contingency plan into their crowdfunding. “But if [the sources] disappear, or sell it elsewhere,” the plan reads, “we will donate every penny we receive to a Canadian non-profit that helps people suffering from addiction and its consequences.”
A worthy cause, to be sure. But not even close to the publication’s original purpose behind soliciting donations.
“But it’s the decision of the people who donated,” Gawker defenders are sure to whine. “No one is twisting your arm.”
Gotcha. It’s also your decision to send your personal information to a Nigerian prince you met over email.
You can empower the people who donated with choice. But the onus of presenting a clear, ethical case is on Gawker. This is clearly not one. A clear case would:
- Detail how much Gawker expects to profit from this article as a whole
- Present how realistic it is that their sources will back out
As far as I’m concerned, Gawker did neither.
This is wrong on so many levels.
Nick Denton can pull his journalist’s card anytime he wants. But it’s clear that Gawker Media is a business first and foremost.
Businesses all across this country take on risk. So do their backers. But they do so with the implication that success returns equal financial rewards.
The poor readers Gawker just exploited stand to gain no such thing. Here’s what they got instead.
- For $5, you get an e-book of Rob Ford quotes. For $25, you get the hard copy. (One assumes the majority of these are available online.)
- For $75, you get a public thank you over Twitter. Gee, now all of my friends will know what an upstanding citizen I am. Thanks, Gawker!
- For $150, you get a Canadian flag signed by Nick Denton himself. Chances are good he also used it to wipe his ass.
- For $200, you get a commemorative digital painting of Rob Ford smoking crack, created by Gawker art director Jim Cooke. (If he isn’t doing it in Microsoft Paint, I’m not impressed.)
- For $1000, you get to have dinner with the Gawker staff in NYC. Later, you get to swim in a pool of money and dump champagne on homeless people.
- For $10,000, you get the iPhone used to record Rob Ford smoking crack. Er, wait, actually you don’t. The owners tossed it into Lake Ontario because the idiots at Gawker implicated them in drug smuggling and blackmail.
Gawker editor John Cook should be fired. Nick Denton should be lampooned. Someone must be held accountable for this exploitation.
Profiteers have masqueraded as journalists before. Have we forgotten those lessons? Will we let opportunists like Nick Denton and his merry band of thieves get away with this again? Or will we boycott websites that make a mockery of business ethics?
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