Gawker’s Future: A Conversation With Nick Denton

On July 16, the news and gossip website Gawker, a digital-media pioneer partly responsible for the tone and sensibility of web journalism, published an article that accused a married male media executive of seeking, via text message, to pay for sex with a gay escort. It was swiftly condemned as an unseemly invasion of privacy, and Gawker’s founder and chief executive, Nick Denton, decided to remove the article from the site. Two of his editors resigned, accusing Mr. Denton of violating editorial independence.