After a mysterious post turned up on Andrew Sullivan’s retired site the Dish on Monday, the famous blogger told TPM the site had been “hacked” — but the real culprit was a former contributor to the blog.
At about noon ET on Monday, a post showing a GIF of a tumbleweed made a brief appearance on the blog. It was the first post since Sullivan shuttered the site back in February after quitting blogging.
Sullivan told TPM that the blog had been “hacked.”
A few hours after the post was removed, ex-Dish guest blogger Alex Pareene published a post on Gawker saying that he had obtained previously-unpublished material by Sullivan.
Pareene, the “gags” editor at Gawker, published screenshots that appeared to show drafts from Sullivan’s website. Among the posts were those with scandalizing headlines such as “I, Andrew Sullivan, (Me) Think Benghazi Was Good” and “Dish Exclusive: Slenderman Is Real And I (Andrew Sullivan) Will Destroy Him Myself.”
TPM asked Pareene on Tuesday whether he was the one behind the initial tumbleweed prank.
“Yes,” he said.
Pareene confirmed he logged on to the Dish’s back-end with his log-in from his days as a guest blogger and published the cheeky GIF. A former editor at the Dish also told TPM Pareene was the one who published the post. He is now blocked from re-entering the Dish with his old password.
Sullivan did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.
In his Gawker post, Pareene winked at readers without explicitly claiming responsibility for the tumbleweed post. He described the culprit as “some sort of brilliant technical genius hacker who definitely knows how to code.”
“The identity of the author (or authors) of these posts is unknown, but the careful reader will spot certain clues” he wrote.
Former Dish editor Chris Bodenner also tweeted directly at Pareene on Monday after the mystery post had been taken down, bearing the image of a burning tumbleweed.
@pareene pic.twitter.com/f3IYolbkJJ
— Chris Bodenner (@chrisbodenner) June 15, 2015
Gawker hired Pareene in January to blog and head up different projects such as “pranks, capers, hijinks, and long cons,” as investigations editor John Cook said at the time. He previously worked at Gawker Media from 2006 to 2010 before departing for Salon.
Ed. Note: The writer of this post, Brendan James, previously worked for Sullivan at The Dish as an intern.
