Executives at Gawker Media announced Tuesday that its flagship website, made famous by its provocative coverage of the New York media world, will now focus entirely on politics.
Gawker’s founder, Nick Denton, wrote in a memo to staff that the site would seize on the 2016 campaign cycle to “reorient its editorial scope on political news, commentary and satire,” according to The New York Times.
“Is there any doubt that the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, a contest between reality-defying fabulists and the last representatives of two exhausted political dynasties will provide rich new opportunities for sensation and satire?” Denton wrote in the memo, as quoted by the Times.
The Times reported that the flagship site’s retooling was part of larger changes being made by Gawker Media, including layoffs and shuttering some subsites. Gawker made headlines earlier this year when it published an article about a media publishing executive that many readers criticized as “gay-shaming” and possibly abetting blackmail. The article was later retracted, prompting two top editors to resign from their posts in protest.
