Gawker.com—the domain and brand, but not the now-offline site and its decades of postings—was sold to a media group in Singapore, among whose possessions are the British music and culture magazine NME and various other music-related brands. Shut down after a lawsuit funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, then sold to Bustle, Gawker was briefly rebooted there and now will see new life once again. Kuok bought 49% of Rolling Stone in 2016, but was bought out not long after; the stories then read exactly like this one.
Meng Ru Kuok, CEO and founder of Singapore-based Caldecott Music Group, acquired the assets of Gawker from Bustle Digital Group. In an email to Variety, Kuok confirmed that he has closed the deal buying the Gawker trademarks and domain name but not its article archives. He said the deal for Gawker is unrelated to his existing operating businesses.
"As it relates to the future for Gawker, as a brand that spent many years in the public consciousness, my personal opinion is that it has the opportunity for reinvention," Kuok said in the email. "Whatever plans materialize, what's for sure is that it won't be the same as it was before."
I noticed a few days back that the archives were wiped at some point, but assumed it was Bustle itself cleaning house of the relevant liabilities. Au contraire! Bustle bought Gawker, and its archives, for a sum not far north of $1m—the bulk of the network, including profitable sites such as Gizmodo, were separately sold off to Univision for $135m. What Kuok is paying now hasn't been disclosed; lose another zero.
