Gawker Media Ethics, Advertising, and Offshore Incorporation

Is Gawker Media an Ethical Company?

Gawker Media cannot be regarded as an ethical company. As a gossip website, the company has on several occasions violated the privacy of others and jeopardized the operations of several entities.

It is clear that Gawker Media would go to any length to maximize page views. For instance, in an attempt to get a "hot story," Gizmodo — an affiliated site of Gawker — offered to buy an unreleased Apple phone that an engineer working for the company had lost. Gizmodo then published photos of the phone, ultimately being "rewarded with roughly twenty million page views" (McGrath, 2010). In Apple's view, this was akin to dealing in stolen property. By releasing photos of Apple's future phone — a prototype that Apple would obviously have wanted to keep under wraps for competitive reasons — Gawker effectively leaked what was privileged, proprietary information, thereby jeopardizing Apple's operations.

The incident also illustrates that checkbook journalism — broadly defined as the practice of seeking out information and paying for it when it meets certain criteria — was central to Gawker's model. Checkbook journalism is a widely criticized practice. In the words of Michael Wines of The Times, "in reputable journalism, paying for information is a cardinal sin" (Goldstein, 2007, p. 118).

It is also important to consider that for a company to be regarded as ethical, its owners, founders, or sponsors must adhere — or be seen to adhere — to certain ethical standards. Taking into account what many who interacted with Nick Denton, the proprietor and founder of Gawker, have said, he does not fit the profile of an ethical executive. In the words of McGrath (2010), "there exists in the collective media a caricature of Denton as an evil, soulless, Machiavellian puppeteer: the wizard of Blogs." McGrath further notes that this image was fed by, among other things, Denton's approach to management. As one of Gawker's former employees observed of Denton, "other people's emotions are alien to him." It is not difficult to understand why a company run by such an individual would struggle to adhere to strict ethical standards of conduct.

Sale of Remnant Advertising Space

If offered employment by Gawker as a marketing manager, I would offer remnant advertising space to interested buyers at a discount — though "interested buyers" would not include disreputable or shady parties. In basic terms, remnant advertising is, as Mares and Weinberg (2014, p. 110) point out, "ad space that is currently being unused." In Gawker Media's case, unsold space could result from insufficient advertiser numbers or a high listed price. Since advertising space is both finite and perishable, failing to sell available slots results in an outright waste of inventory.

As Gawker's marketing manager, I would avoid a situation in which the company loses revenue by filling unsold slots with non-revenue-generating fillers. I would also not offer such space for free, as doing so would undermine the purpose of selling advertising altogether. Instead, I would offer remnant slots at a price significantly lower than that charged for standard placements, making the transaction worthwhile for both parties while still generating income for the company.

To protect my ethical principles — and to ensure that Gawker Media is not seen as condoning shady business practices — I would establish a systematic process for selecting which parties may access remnant space. Eligible buyers would be grouped into three categories: (i) existing advertisers, who would receive first priority given that they already have approved budgets in place; (ii) charitable organizations; and (iii) startups with annual revenues below $50,000. This framework would effectively exclude disreputable actors while converting otherwise wasted inventory into modest but legitimate revenue.

This approach aligns with the reasoning of Mares and Weinberg (2014), who argue that failing to sell empty inventory when deadlines approach guarantees losses, and that most publications therefore see the logic in accepting lower prices for such space.