History has shown that Gawker’s “no-fucks-given” attitude is unlike any other. They’ve published countless articles over their years that make most recoil in disgust.1 None so much as Jordan Sargent’s piece in which he aids a blackmailing escort in outing a CFO for ad revenue.
I read an average of 5-10 Gawker or Gawker Media brand articles a day. Kotaku, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, i09, and even Jezebel run through my feeds. I enjoy and learn from many of their writers, but stories like this I simply cannot stand behind.
Jordan Sargent, who has contributed to other publications such as Pop Matters, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork, probably ruined his career today with a homophobic, blackmail abetting hate piece that has the Internet (rightly) up in arms.
Posting screenshots of private text conversations isn’t journalism and it isn’t anyone’s business. This is life-ruining stuff. Ironically, I think Sargent might get hurt the most by hitting publish.
Don’t give Gawker the click on this one. If you want to read it, read it on the Internet Archive linked here instead.
Here are some notable Twitter reactions and comments:
Mike Ryan, Senior Entertainment Writer at Uproxx
Luke O'Neil, journalist
Glenn Greenwald, journalist at The Intercept
Adam Weinstein, Senior Writer at Gawker
Max Read, EIC of Gawker
- I’m intentionally leaving out links to any of these. They aren’t getting my clicks. ↩