But the readers don’t have the power. It’s difficult to recall now, but at Gawker’s founding there was a sense that the internet was a free space, where anything can be said. An island off the mainland, where people could be themselves. Where writers could say things that would get you fired in an instant from a print publication. Where you could say what you thought without fear of being fired, or sued out of existence. But when you try to make a business out of that freedom, the system will fight you.
No matter what you, as a reader thought of Gawker, the way the site was destroyed and writers silenced is certainly one of the most damaging to free-speech and free-press in this decade. It’s okay for journalists and media groups to have enemies. That comes with the territory but for those enemies to silence you forever, that’s undemocratic.