"And you can understand why [Tim] Cook was surprised to learn that his company was making a show about Gawker."

"The site represented a particular irritant to Apple. The most famous incident came in 2010, when Gizmodo got its hands on a prototype of the iPhone 4. Steve Jobs pleaded to get it back, police close to the company raided an editor’s house, and Gawker reveled in the chaos. But Mr. Cook also has a personal grievance with the site, which in 2008 responded to a glowing article about the low-profile executive by floating the rumor that he was gay. (Other coverage had used euphemistic expressions like 'intensely private' lifelong bachelor.) When Apple named Mr. Cook to lead the company in 2011, it made no mention of his sexual orientation, but Gawker’s Ryan Tate introduced him as 'The Most Powerful Gay Man in America.' Mr. Cook later wrote proudly of his identity, and said he’d long been open with people in his personal life. But Mr. Tate said he thought frequently about the story afterward, and even wondered whether Mr. Cook’s parents had known about his identity before the report."

From "Apple TV Was Making a Show About Gawker. Then Tim Cook Found Out/Big tech companies now exert huge influence over what stories get told. The message is clear: Be careful who you offend" (NYT).

"For decades, the news media benefitted from the deference paid by courts to the judgments of newspaper editors."

"The judge in federal court treated Gawker’s editors as if they were running a newspaper, and he declined to second-guess them about what constitutes the news. The jury in state court did the opposite. The question now is whether the law, instead of treating every publication as a newspaper, will start to treat all publications as Web sites—with the same skepticism and hostility displayed by the jury in Tampa. The new President and his fellow-billionaires, like Thiel, will certainly welcome a legal environment that is less forgiving of media organizations. Trump’s victory, along with Hulk Hogan’s, suggests that the public may well take their side, too."

Writes Jeffrey Toobin in "Gawker's Demise and the Trump-Era Threat to the First Amendment/Hulk Hogan’s smashing legal victory shows us that publishing the truth may no longer be enough."

The death of Gawker.

Announced here, with prime blame laid on "the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel" and "his clandestine legal campaign against the company."

Ah, well. I remember Gawker from the Elizabeth Spiers days, that is, the year 2003. Loved it.

Where is she now? I had to look it up. Here Wikipedia page says she's editor of The New York Observer. You know what The New York Observer is? It's Jared Kusher's publication. But Wikipedia's page for The New York Observer says she was only editor 2011 to 2012. Is Spiers so unimportant that her Wikipedia page isn't updated in 4 years?!

Well, here's a little piece from this morning: "A eulogy for Gawker.com from its first editor, Elizabeth Spiers/Plus: What it’s like working for Donald Trump’s son-in-law":

Spiers recalled that Gawker.com started as a completely different sort of site from what it is today.

"There have been so many incarnations of Gawker," Spiers said. "If you read it when I was writing it, it wasn’t really negative — it was gleefully laughing at the notion that the entire world revolves around New York. The alter-ego voice I was using was a persona that had no self-awareness, and that was part of the fun of it."

I still don't know what she's doing now, and I don't know what she said about Kushner. The link goes to a podcast, and I haven't listened to it yet. I've only read the text. 

ADDED: The text does give Spiers new line of work: "founder the virtual reality agency The Insurrection."

Gawker's Ashley Feinberg trashes Trump’s Director of Social Media Dan Scavino over the Star-of-David/sheriff's star, and 9 minutes later takes it back and begs for him to unblock her so she can apologize.

The post is: "Trump Campaign Blames Anti-Semitic Tweet on 'Microsoft's Shapes.'" Feinberg is reacting to Savino's statement:



Feinberg's first attack on Savino is that the source of the graphic really is anti-Semitic because, this is another image from that source:



Hillary's face all over a swastika. What can that mean other than Hillary is a Nazi? If calling somebody a Nazi makes you anti-Semitic, then an awful lot of Trump's critics are anti-Semitic.

But Feinberg has another argument. She looks at the "shapes" tag in Microsoft Word and finds no 6-pointed star. She mocks: "There is, however, a triangle which can be used to create a six-pointed star—so maybe Dan was getting creative."

9 minutes later, she posts an update:

Update 10:38 p.m.: Some versions of Microsoft’s products do, in fact, carry the star. Dan, I would love to apologize to you personally. Please unblock me.

Brilliant. The star? Generic now. You mean the Star of David? Or just some 6-pointed star, giving evidence that a 6-pointed star can be just a star, just as not every 5-pointed star is a Satanic pentagram.

Feinberg does avoid the specious argument I've seen elsewhere, that sheriff's badges have little circles on the points. Some do:



Some don't:



Those who make the little-circles argument ought to have to deal with the intersecting-triangles aspect of the Star of David. The clearly intentional Stars of David I am seeing — for example at the Wikipedia article — have lines separating the points into little triangles around a hexagram. Look at the flag of Israel:



The Nazi's crude patch did not omit those lines:



But what a distraction! This was the weekend after Hillary Clinton's interview with the F.B.I., and her supporters successfully jammed the American brainwaves with the loud message that Trump is a bigot. That's a message they're yelling over and over. It's what they've got. Is it even a message at all or just raw emotional manipulation?

Gawker publishes what seems to be the DNC's oppo file on Trump — hacked by the Russians...

... and forwarded to Gawker by "Guccifer 2.0."

It's a 200+-page document plus "a variety of donor registries and other strategy files, 'just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC’s network,' the purported hacker claimed over email, adding that he’s in possession of 'about 100 Gb of data including financial reports, donors’ lists, election programs, action plans against Republicans, personal mails, etc.'"

The enormous opposition document... appears to be a summary of the Democratic Party’s strategy for delegitimizing and undermining Trump’s presidential aspirations—at least as they existed at the end of last year.... A section titled “Top Narratives” describes a seven-pronged attack on Trump’s character and record.... “Trump has no core”... Trump is running a “divisive and offensive campaign”... Trump is a “bad businessman”... Trump espouses “dangerous & irresponsible policies”... Donald Trump is the “misogynist in chief”... Trump is an “out of touch” member of the elite...  Trump’s “personal life"....

It appears that virtually all of the claims are derived from published sources, as opposed to independent investigations or mere rumor. It’s also very light on anything that could be considered “dirt"....

Here's a second Gawker article, basically laughing at the weakness of the material, including the ludicrous problem that Trump has flip-flopped on Heaven.

You can read the whole dismal document at the first link, where there's also an update saying that the Trump campaign has taken the position that the DNC somehow hacked itself, deliberately putting this file out there as a distraction.

"I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest."

Said Peter Thiel — the PayPal billionaire — explaining why he bankrolled Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. He said it was "less about revenge and more about specific deterrence." The "revenge" part relates to the fact that Gawker had once written about him "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people." Revenge looks backward, getting recompense for wrongs done. Deterrence looks to the future:

“I can defend myself. Most of the people they attack are not people in my category. They usually attack less prominent, far less wealthy people that simply can’t defend themselves.” He said that “even someone like Terry Bollea who is a millionaire and famous and a successful person didn’t quite have the resources to do this alone.”...

“I refuse to believe that journalism means massive privacy violations,” he said. “I think much more highly of journalists than that. It’s precisely because I respect journalists that I do not believe they are endangered by fighting back against Gawker.... It’s not like it is some sort of speaking truth to power or something going on here. The way I’ve thought about this is that Gawker has been a singularly terrible bully. In a way, if I didn’t think Gawker was unique, I wouldn’t have done any of this. If the entire media was more or less like this, this would be like trying to boil the ocean.”...

“[W]e would get in touch with the plaintiffs who otherwise would have accepted a pittance for a settlement...."

If you keep reading over at the link — which goes to the NYT — past the quotes from lawprofs who explain there's no ethical violation in Hogan's receiving help from an unnamed donor and no effect on the merits of his case and past some defense of Gawker from its founder and into the part about Thiel's brilliant career, you'll eventually get to:

A libertarian, Mr. Thiel is a pledged delegate for Donald J. Trump for the 2016 Republican National Convention.

The top-rated comments at the Times all pick on this point: 1. "After reading this my respect for Peter Thiel, as it were, disappeared." 2. "At least Gawker relies on truth. Trump, on the other hand, disseminates lies like confetti. Wonder how Thiel reconciles that reality." 3. "Isn't it funny how libertarians don't want any rules, until they do?" 4. "I was actually rooting for Mr. Thiel until I read, 'Mr. Thiel is a pledged delegate for Donald J. Trump for the 2016 Republican National Convention.'"

#3 is a good comment. I'd up-vote that.

"Hulk Hogan Awarded $115 Million in Privacy Suit Against Gawker."

The NYT reports.

Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University at Buffalo whose research focuses on the intersection of the First Amendment, media and privacy, said... “For a jury to say that a celebrity has a right to privacy that outweighs the public’s ‘right to know,’ and that a celebrity sex tape is not newsworthy, represents a real shift in American free press law”...

The top-rated comment tops the lawprof:

This decision will have a chilling effect on the dissemination of private sex tapes involving professional wrestlers. A sad day for America.

"The Internet is a hybrid of television and print. And in order to communicate to a younger audience, they expect there will be accompanying illustration..."

"... proof of what the writer is saying... If you are trying to communicate to a modern audience, pictures are essential."

Said Gawker mogul Nick Denton, testifying in the invasion-of-privacy case brought by the man whose public persona is Hulk Hogan, who seeks $100 million in damages for the sex video published on Gawker.  The sex video "was our way to show a highly unusual encounter," Denton said.

"Let's talk for a lack of a better word, your philosophy on privacy," said [Hogan's lawyer Ken] Turkel, bringing up a 2013 interview... ("Gawker's Nick Denton Explains Why Invasion of Privacy Is Positive for Society") as well as another interview with Playboy where Denton addressed privacy by stating, "I don’t think people give a fuck, actually" and "Every infringement of privacy is sort of liberating."

Denton [said] "I think being our true selves, being open to our colleagues and friends and family, my personal view is that we are happier as a result.... [The sex video] was our way to show a highly unusual encounter."... Denton was asked to read salacious passages from Gawker's Hogan story in the "most humanizing way possible." And so, with a British accent, as gently as Denton could muster, the jury heard a play-by-play of Hogan having sex, lines like: "Then we watch Hulk stand up and clumsily attempt to roll a condom on to his erect penis which, even if it has been ravaged by steroids and middle-age, still appears to be the size of a thermos you'd find in a child's lunchbox."

"An anonymous person or group has started a 'Union of White NYU Students' Facebook page..."

"... these kinds of pages have cropped up at a number of universities that have sought to have a real dialogue about race and inclusion. There is no such organization as this at NYU. We call on all parties to contribute thoughtfully and respectfully to the discourse on race and to reject efforts to derail or distort the conversation."

"A message to the NYU community" at NYU's Facebook page. I just happened to randomly click on the NYU page. Wasn't looking for this.

Here's the "Union of White NYU Students" page. Here's a Gawker article about it: "Who’s Behind the Fake 'Union of White NYU Students'?"  Gawker contacted the anonymous administrator of the page, asking for proof that he was really an NYU student. The administrator responded but didn't break his anonymity, citing death threats and accusations. ("When I chose to do this, I knew that it would not be long before the accusations of KKK, Nazi etc came out. But I hope to use these to make my point. White identity cannot be discussed constructively because of this sort of slander.")

The Daily Beast take is "Racist Trolls Are Behind NYU’s ‘White Student Union’ Hoax."

"Gawker is no longer the insolent blog that began in 2003.... This story about the former Treasury Secretary’s brother does not rise to the level that our flagship site should be publishing."

"The point of this story was not in my view sufficient to offset the embarrassment to the subject and his family. Accordingly, I have had the post taken down. It is the first time we have removed a significant news story for any reason other than factual error or legal settlement.... But this decision will establish a clear standard for future stories. It is not enough for them simply to be true. They have to reveal something meaningful. They have to be true and interesting. These texts were interesting, but not enough, in my view. In light of Gawker’s past rhetoric about our fearlessness and independence, this can be seen as a capitulation. And perhaps, to some extent, it is...."

Writes Nick Denton, reacting to intense criticisms. 

ADDED: TPM says:

[T]here was apparently a clear difference of opinion about removing the post between Gawker's parent company, Gawker Media, and the website's editorial brass. Gawker staff writer J.K. Trotter wrote that Gawker Media's managing partnership, which includes its legal counsel, actually had voted 5-1 to take the much-maligned article down over the protests of "every other member of Gawker Media’s editorial leadership."...

The website's editor-in-chief, Max Read, had defended the article's publication by arguing that the executive was fair game by virtue of his position with Condé Nast and the fact that he solicited a male escort while being married to a woman....

But Denton seemed to side with those journalists who had complained on Twitter that outing the executive wasn't truly in the public interest.

"The beautiful door is completely open for me."

Some nice viral video from Dove (that serves an advertising purpose without showing a product).

I found that because Buzzfeed had an article about it with the subtitle "Once again, soap is acting condescending" and an "update" that reads:

This post was inappropriately deleted amid an ongoing conversation about how and when to publish personal opinion pieces on BuzzFeed. The deletion was in violation of our editorial standards and the post has been reinstated.

The article was (lamely) critical of Dove:

Dove has a long and fabled history of experimenting with the shame women feel about their bodies and posturing that they are the way out of it.... Feeling beautiful is an obligation and a pressure — and sometimes a pleasure, but not always. Feeling beautiful is so much work: work that beauty companies cash in on and exploit.

Gawker attributed the deleting to the fact that Dove advertises at Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed denied that, saying that the post violated a "show don't tell" rule:

When we approach charged topics like body image and feminism, we need to show not tell. (That’s a good rule in general, by the way.) We can and should report on conversations that are happening around something that we have opinions about, but using our own voices (and hence, BuzzFeed’s voice) to advance a personal opinion often isn’t in line with BuzzFeed Life’s tone and editorial mission...

When we write about news-related topics revolving around class, race, and feminism and other heated topics, it’s important that we show the conversation that is happening, or find other people who can give smart and valid quotes to make the point, or, ideally, add to the conversation with something substantively new....

I get it. The "buzz" that belongs in the feed of Buzzfeed is the buzz out there in the world, not the buzz in the writer's head. You're supposed to receive and convey the buzz, not create buzz, or at least that's the way it's supposed to look.

"Right now, in a place you've never visited, a person you'll never know is dying."

"If he's dying in a particularly devastating way — and, more importantly, if he is leaving behind shareable content — it is possible that millions of strangers will mourn his or her death tomorrow. Why?... Grief porn is... voyeuristic, addictive, and compulsively attractive. It grabs at a desire to indulge when indulgence is otherwise unavailable. It promises a brief, satisfying release. And, like regular pornography, the internet has transformed it. Freed from the already relaxed constraints of tabloid journalism, grief porn is no longer obligated to fake newsworthiness or importance...."

From "This Kid Just Died [VIDEO]: Grief Porn Enters the Facebook Era." Via Metafilter, where somebody said: "Even having read the article, I can't imagine how someone would see 'A Father Sings To His Dying Newborn Son After His Wife Dies Following Childbirth' and think 'I wanna click that!'"

What to think about that Esquire essay "In Praise of 42-Year-Old Women."

I'm really conflicted about this. I've been close to talking about it twice, and I find myself drawn back to it a third time, and I'm going to add that up to mean I've got to puzzle out the strange attraction, not of the 42-Year-Old Women but of this particular 55/56-year-old man writing about the 42-year-old woman... writing in Esquire about writing about the 42-year-old woman.

Instapundit wrote: "ADVICE TO EDITORS: Before you assign or publish an article, ask yourself, 'Will this article be more enjoyable than the Gawker blog post viciously mocking the article?'" which linked to Robert Stacy McCain, who was (obviously) linking to Gawker. At Gawker, Tom Scocca was eking humor out of paraphrasing the Esquire piece in plain speech, with lines like: "Tom Junod can name several famous women who are 42 who he would be willing to fuck. Right in their 42-year-old vaginas. Cameron Diaz. Sofia Vergara. Leslie Mann. Amy Poehler. He would fuck these women, despite their age, and even share a joke with them, because the 42-year-old woman, she is a person, or at least a person-like idea...." Which is funny, but it's only funny because Junod gave him something to paraphrase and the will to do it. But think about it: Much literary humor is done through the device of taking what would be crude to say and putting it in an elaborate form. Anyone can translate it back into the crude. And much internet hu

***

And so — in the middle of a word — a post fragment ends. I'm tired of looking at that Draft post in my list of posts. I can't throw it out and I can't finish it. I'm just publishing it because I'm amused that my effort ended so abruptly. I felt some urge to defend Tom Junod, but not quite that much.

And then thi

***

Oh, good lord! I did it again!

It's the Tom Junod jinx. But, hey, look, Tom Junod is writing about pit bulls: "The most ubiquitous dog in the U. S.—the dog in whose face we see our collective reflection—is now the pit bull. Which makes it curious that we as a culture kill as many as three thousand of them per day."

ADDED: I was able to overcome my writer's block and say what I wanted to say in the comments: here. That was weird.

"I try to learn interesting things about the world and in this case, the competitiveness about 'I know the Internet better than you do' is pretty profound."

"There's a tremendous arrogance. I found that hilarious — by Gawker standards, it was a resounding compliment." 

The "that," which Susan Orlean found hilarious, was Gawker's opinion that her New Yorker article, "Man and Machine/Playing Games on the Internet" was "generally, much less embarrassing than it could have been."

I've read the New Yorker article. You'll need a subscription to read more than the very beginning. It's about 2 guys who are interested in doing prankish internet things and portraying what they are doing as an art project. Why is The New Yorker facilitating their enterprise? Partly because they've managed to build heavy traffic, but also because Susan Orlean felt like writing about it. So then, why did she feel like writing about it? You can read the interview at the top link and find some answers like:

It doesn't even occur to me to turn on the TV anymore. I'm just sort of screwing around online, either on my phone or my iPad. I can stay very entertained. It's remarkable....

I'm a real app girl — I'm always goofing around with the newest gizmo....

I, for one, welcome our computer overlords. I don't worry about that, I really don't....

"Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people's rights to make a buck."

"This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff's screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally."

That's the language of the complaint filed in federal court by Quentin Tarantino. 

People's rights to make a buck. That's pithy.

"What You Should Know About the Abuse Allegations Against Woody Allen."

Summarized at Gawker, after Mia and Ronan Farrow tweeted hostility when Woody was honored at the Golden Globes. Some interesting comments over there:

"Did you notice this entire article was a sponsored ad by Seiko watches? It was all leading to the end telltale sign."

SOJO asks, late into the comments on the previous thread. Of course, the answer is no. I would never have blogged it if I'd seen it the faint "sponsored" at the top — over there at Gawker, where I will be less likely to read and careful about linking to in the future. Fortunately, I linked with disfavor, disagreeing with the part I quoted.

Had I chosen to quote the 6th item on the 6-point list — the one that counts using your cell phone as your watch as a "Telltale Signs It's Time to Upgrade Your Style" — I'd surely have disagreed with that too. If you have a cell phone, you have a pocket watch. Why do you need a wristwatch? If you're so hot to encumber your wrist with unnecessary decoration, wear a bracelet.

And I don't mind saying — despite my annoyance at having linked to Gawker's sponsored article — that I'd appreciate your buying that bracelet through The Althouse Amazon Portal. Clearly, I'm not opposed to ads and monetizing blogs. I think that's good. But don't put up a phony article! I'd never do that. I put links on things I'm writing about anyway or openly invite you to shop at Amazon.

ADDED: If you must buy a watch, how about an Imaginary Industrial Watch Brought to Life?

Kinja, Gawker's answer to the problem of ugly, out-of-control comments sections.

"Kinja flips on its head the idea of comments and conversation below a story on Gawker Media’s Web sites...."

When people sign up for Kinja, they are given their own Web address on the Gawker platform — similar to a Tumblr Web site — which becomes a collection of that person’s comments on stories. Kinja will also enable readers to write headlines and summaries — comments that have graduated from college, if you will — for stories on Gawker and even from other sites. Readers will then be able to use Kinja as a central hub for discussion on these stories, almost like their own chat room protected from the commenting maelstrom.

Great. I hope the design works. Seems similar to what Metafilter has been for many years. It's good to allow people to take possession of their collected comments that are otherwise scattered about. You can take some pride in your body of comments, at least within Gawker blogs (as, on Metafilter, you have a page that collects your comments on all the various Metafilter posts you've commented on). It makes being a commenter more like being a blogger, and it lets a popular commenter drive traffic to blog posts. But it's all very intra-Gawker, just like Metafilter is intra-Metafilter. I'd like to see an overarching comments system like this. And I'd love to see Blogger provide something like this for Blogger blogs like mine.

Along with the updates to the comments service on Monday, Mr. Denton is set to unveil “a manifesto” of sorts that will outline Gawker’s plan to further blur the line between reporters and readers and explain readers’ rights. Among them, there is “the right to experience legible conversations” on the site.

I've had a big struggle, peaking over the summer, with the problem of "illegible conversation," as problem commenters maliciously disrupt what might otherwise be a readable comments section. Now, I don't know that the Kinja solution will work. It might empower some of the most disruptive commenters, as they go off topic to entertain and win admirers for some agenda or style of comedy or edgy satire who'll relocate to their Kinja page. But Denton just wants you within the Gawker media empire, and not off on Twitter or Facebook, because he wants the page views in his operation, where he gets the ad revenue. The situation for a blogger is different.

I blog to publish my own writing, and I include comments as a way for me to interact with readers and to amplify and get different angles on things I want to talk about. I'm not about devoting my work to maintaining a social media website for people who don't care about what I'm writing. That's the enterprise of people like Denton who are designing a mechanism for making a lot of money. As an individual expressing myself — with the long-time motto "To live freely in writing" — I am more like the commenters upon whom Gawker is leveraging its Kinja scheme.

"Gossip site Gawker publishes names of ALL licensed gun owners in New York City."

"The names of permit holders are available from NYPD with Freedom of Information Law request/Journalists receive death threats within an hour of publishing list on site."

Gawker seeks traffic. Stirs up outrage. (Link doesn't go to Gawker.)

Gawker tells Steven Crowder to "stop whining, take your licks, and accept that getting hit in the face is a hazard of inserting yourself..."

"... in the middle of an argument between billionaire-funded know-nothing ideologues and people whose livelihoods and stability are being threatened by the insatiable greed of the super-rich and the blind extremism of their wooden-headed political allies. In exchange, liberals will buy you a band-aid for the cut on your forehead and re-iterate that Punching Is Bad. Sound good?"

I know. They're asking for it: a link. I'm a sucker... must say what baited to say blah blah blah blah liberals blah blaming the victim blah blah if a conservative said that about a woman blah blah blah blah she was asking for it blah blah wearing that smirking look short skirt on his face her female body blah blah....