Bankrupt social justice warrior blog network Gawker Media, Inc. has been acquired by Spanish-language media company Univision Communications, Inc. for $135 million.

In acquiring Gawker Media, Univision outbid publishing company Ziff Davis LLC, who had offered the lower figure of $90 million to buy the blog network.

Founded in 2002, Gawker Media was one of the first large blog networks and was initially focused on a tabloid model before shifting to a focus on social justice around the beginning of the current decade.

After initially offering a wide model that included at its peak around one dozen blogs, including the infamous Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag, the company consolidated its blogs into seven mastheads: Gawker.com, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and Jezebel.

Gawker.com remained the main site in the network and ultimately its undoing, after the site published a stolen sex tape featuring Terry Bollea, better known as the retired professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.

The tape, which showed Bollea having sex with Heather Clem, the ex-wife of his former friend, Bubba “the Love Sponge” Clem, ended with a lawsuit against the network and damages of $140 million being awarded, resulting in Gawker Media filing for bankruptcy protection; of note, founder Nick Denton was found to be personally liable for $10 million in damages, and former Gawker.com editor A.J. Daulerio was found liable for $100,000.

Denton confirmed the sale, saying in a statement published by CNN that “I am pleased that our employees are protected and will continue their work under new ownership — disentangled from the legal campaign against the company. We could not have picked an acquirer more devoted to vibrant journalism.”

The deal is subject to approval by the bankruptcy court.

Hero

Without question, continuing to smile as the sale process has proceeded is the hero of the story, legendary Silicon Valley investor and PayPal, Inc. alumni, Peter Thiel.

Thiel, who was outed by Gawker.com in 2007, funded Bollea’s case against the company along with a number of other cases in what some consider to be an act of revenge, but Thiel rightly argues was him standing up for those unfairly attacked by Gawker Media.

“As the competition for attention was rewarding ever more exploitation, Gawker was leading the way,” Thiel explained in an op-ed in The New York Times Tuesday. “The site routinely published thinly sourced, nasty articles that attacked and mocked people.”

“Most of the victims didn’t fight back; Gawker could unleash both negative stories and well-funded lawyers. Since cruelty and recklessness were intrinsic parts of Gawker’s business model, it seemed only a matter of time before they would try to pretend that journalism justified the very worst.”

He goes on to explain that the case of Bollea was beyond the pale in breaching the privacy of an individual, noting that without his support the case would never have come to court.

“For my part, I am proud to have contributed financial support to his case,” Thiel added. “I will support him until his final victory — Gawker said it intends to appeal — and I would gladly support someone else in the same position.”

Karma

Gawker Media liked to fancy itself as a bastion of social justice and championed, particularly since 2010, even single trendy cause where it perceived that people were being oppressed, but at the same time continued to channel its tabloid roots for traffic in trampling on, and arguably oppressing those who they did not agree with.

Their model was one of rank hypocrisy, and ultimately the concept of cause and effect, where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual, better known as karma, has now played its roll.

Surprisingly Univision has also acquired Gawker.com itself, despite speculation going into the sales process that any potential buyer was more likely to leave the blog on the table and buy the other sites given Gawker.com’s tarnished reputation.

What Univision will now do with the network is not clear, but with any luck, they’ll shutter Gawker.com and reform the other blogs on the network into ones that are far more palatable to a large media company.

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons/CC by 2.0, Wikimedia Commons/CC by 2.0.