Gawker’s fired national security editor William Arkin set fire to the news site’s “external shitstorm” and internal dysfunction on his way out the door in an email posted Monday to the archive site Cryptome.
Arkin, who launched the site’s Phase Zero vertical to cover national security in April 2015, wrote that he was told on Friday to take a buyout as the site relaunches in an attempt to become “20 percent nicer.”
Arkin’s parting email described Gawker as a “miserable place, so driven by its own feverish pursuit that it has no clue what kind of world it inhabits and thus helps build.”
The site came under fire by journalists and its own reporters earlier this month for an article about a media executive’s failed rendezvous with a male escort, who then apparently tried to blackmail the executive. The post was eventually removed and two top editors resigned.
“The external shitstorm, the resignations, and then the internal drama left the staff in the lurch and without leadership and without even a clear mission. And just let me say: Though almost every article I have read since has captured Gawker’s rapid meltdown, I haven’t really seen one that captures fully what happened and why,” Arkin wrote in the email.
Arkin also tweeted about his departure.
Yes it is true: I am leaving Gawker and @GawkerPhaseZero, casualty, refugee of whatever it is that happened. Not quite the right fit anyhow
— William M. Arkin (@warkin) July 27, 2015
“I hate to be hyperbolic, but want to understand ISIS or the Tea Party or Occupy or Charleston or Dylan?” Arkin wrote in the email. “Look no further than Gawker and its ilk, which means look no further than twitter or your own so-called smartphone: We are making the world a miserable place. I’m glad I can withdraw and think about it.”
Read the full email on Cryptome.
