‘It’s not going to be nice’: Leah Finnegan is rebuilding Gawker with her editorial vision front and center

September 28, 2021

By Kayleigh Barber

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When the bankrupt Gawker shut its doors in 2016, it seemed unlikely that the site known for snarky opinions, celebrity gossip and haughty critiques would return. But rumblings of the site’s return — and its snippy attitude — came in July 2018 when BDG CEO Bryan Goldberg paid just under $1.5 million for the defunct website.

Three years later, Gawker is back up and running (after an initial false start with a different cast of characters) under editor-in-chief Leah Finnegan.

Finnegan isn’t new to the brand — or BDG. She was formerly the features editor during Gawker’s heyday (when it published notable pieces like “Billionaire Pervert Jeffrey Epstein and His Famous Friends: A Primer” and “People Keep Telling Us About Kevin Spacey’s Aggressive Love for Men“). About a year after it shut down, she led one of BDG’s newly acquired sites The Outline before that too was shuttered in 2020.

Then after a year of unemployment that began at the start of the pandemic, she jumped at the chance to return and relaunch the new Gawker under BDG’s ownership. This time, however, she is determined to right the wrongs of the past, which she considers to be internal factors including misogyny and bro culture as well as misguided editorial decisions, such as publishing illicit sex tapes.

Her work is cut out for her: Gawker ended its run after a lawsuit was brought against its founder Nick Denton for publishing those tapes.

“[Gawker is] such a loaded place and the time I was there was so dramatic and tumultuous. It was an earlier iteration of the way digital media worked and I didn’t want to go back to that Gawker,” said Finnegan on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

This is the third episode of a four-part series called “The Modern Newsroom Leader,” which features newly appointed editors-in-chief as they navigate industry challenges including staffers dealing with burnout, unsteady financial businesses and prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring practices.

In this conversation, Finnegan discusses how she’s crafted her management style to addresses these issues while also building Gawker 2.0 into a brand that she and her team is proud of.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

The Gawker 2.0 mission

An important thing to know and to realize about old Gawker is that the lawsuits and the really incendiary stuff, and, you know, the misogyny that was only about — not to minimize it — 20% of what Gawker was. And then the rest of Gawker was funny and smart and provocative. And I edited some of my favorite pieces I ever did at Gawker. My mission statement going into this Gawker was to take the parts I really loved about the time I work there that don’t really get remembered because they’re not a sex tape, and make those …read more

Source:: Digiday

      

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