Two senior Gawker editors have resigned overnight after a clash with management over a controversially deleted post.
In a blow to the independent media company, executive editor Tommy Craggs and editor-in-chief of Gawker.com Max Read stepped down from their positions, effective today, after senior management partnerships voted on Friday to remove a piece the site had published about a Condé Nast CEO paying for a night with an escort.
given the chance gawker will always report on married c-suite executives of major media companies fucking around on their wives
— max read (@max_read) July 17, 2015
“This isn’t the place to debate the merits of that story, other than to say that I stand by the post,” Mr Craggs notes in his resignation email to editorial staff, now published on Gawker.
“The impulse that led to Thursday’s story is the impulse upon which Nick [Denton] himself built Gawker’s brand, the impulse against which Gorenstein sells his ads. The undoing of it began the moment Nick himself put the once inviolable sanctity of Gawker Media’s editorial to a vote.”
British-born Denton, despite building the brand on a pillar of editorial independence and an insistence on pushing boundaries, was in the 4-2 majority of managing partners who voted in favour of the post being taken down nearly 24 hours after its release.
Gawker is no stranger to breaking controversial and often provocative stories, but never have they retracted an entire piece for reasons other than fact-correction or legal issues. They are often seen as the first online start-up to establish core news values and absolute transparency while retaining independence from conglomerates and relying on creative, internet-age voices.
The New York-based Gawker collective, which also includes such brands as Jezebel, Gizmodo and ThoughtCatalog and has a string of Australian-tailored sites, was the first independent media brand to unionise just last month, in a 75 per cent majority vote. The unionisation was led by the impetus of staff hoping to “improve communication between the staff and management,” which they said was too haphazard.
Melbourne-based editor and spin doctor Mike Smith says modern audiences need the inherent trust in the media Gawker provides, and the event will reignite widespread cynicism.
“Editorial independence is a characteristic that can help build trust between a publication and its audience. Today’s educated audience is cynical about the media and the industry has failed to rebuild trust at a time when it needs it more than ever,” he says.
A previous editor of The Age and currently one of Australia’s most experienced public relations experts, Mr Smith says the incident has changed the online outlet permanently.
“The only thing worse than not having editorial independence is to pretend you have it when you don’t. Gawker will survive and it might even thrive, but it will never be the same. And it will never be able to pretend that it practises editorial independence.
“The media is supposed to expose hypocrisy, not practise it.”
