Nicholas Guido Anthony Denton is a BritishInternet entrepreneur, journalist and blogger, the founder and former proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and was the managing editor of the New York-based Gawker.com, until a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan bankrupted the company. For years after starting Gawker Media in 2003, Denton ran the company out of his apartment in SoHo.
Life and career
Denton grew up in Hampstead, the son of British economist Geoffrey Denton and his wife, Marika, a Hungarian Jew who survived the Nazis and escaped the Soviet occupation at age 18. A psychotherapist, she died of cancer the year before her son moved to New York City. Denton has a younger sister, Rebecca. He was educated at University College School and University College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He also became the editor of the university's magazine. He began his career as a journalist with the Financial Times. He co-wrote a book about the collapse of Barings Bank, called All That Glitters. He was a co-founder of a social networking site, First Tuesday and co-founded Moreover Technologies with David Galbraith and Angus Bankes, schoolmates from UCS. Denton is the founder of now-defunct Gawker Media, most of the assets of which were sold to Univision following the Bollea v. Gawker case loss and ensuing bankruptcy. Denton was featured in the Sunday Times Rich List 2007 in position #502 with an estimated wealth of £140m based on the sale of his previous companies and the then-current value of Gawker Media. Denton lives in New York City.
In 2007, Denton's Valleywag editor Owen Thomas outed Silicon Valley businessman, Peter Thiel as gay in a post entitled "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people." In the comment section of Thomas's post, Denton speculated as to why Thiel kept "his personal life a secret from journalists... for so long." He named "a guy called Matt" as an alleged boyfriend. In response, Thiel called Valleywag the "Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda". Thiel called out the sites for "scar everybody" and for stifling the culture of Silicon Valley, which is "supposed to be about people who are willing to think out loud and be different." It was later revealed in May 2016 that he had paid $10 million in legal expenses to finance several lawsuits brought by others against Denton and Gawker Media, including a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan. Denton publicly blamed Thiel several times for having planned to take down Gawker.com.
On 28 October 2010, Denton published an anonymous kiss-and-tell piece entitled, "I Had a One-Night Stand with Christine O'Donnell". However, according to the writer, O'Donnell only slept naked with the anonymous writer and did not have sex with him. The National Organization for Women condemned the piece as "slut-shaming". NOW's president, Terry O'Neill, stated, "It operates as public sexual harassment. And like all sexual harassment, it targets not only O'Donnell, but all women contemplating stepping into the public sphere." Salon's Justin Elliott criticized the ad hominem nature of the article, tweeting "Today, we are all Christine O'Donnell." Gawker.com reportedly paid in the "low four figures" for the story. Denton defended it, praising its "brilliant packaging."
Hulk Hogan and bankruptcy
On October 4, 2012, Gawker published an extract from a leaked sex tape of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan. After Denton refused to comply with a cease-and-desist order from Hogan and a court injunction to remove the video, Hogan sued Gawker for violation of privacy. On March 18, 2016, the jury found in favor of Hogan and awarded him $115 million, which included $55 million in compensatory damages and $60 million for emotional distress. On March 21, the jury awarded Hogan an additional $25 million in punitive damages, including $10 million from Denton personally. Denton filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on August 1, 2016. On March 22, 2017, Hogan and Denton reached a settlement that allows Denton to emerge from personal bankruptcy.
