Gawker Will Relaunch in Early 2019

Now-shuttered gossip website Gawker will relaunch in early 2019, according to a Tuesday memo from its new owner, Bryan Goldberg. “We won’t recreate Gawker exactly as it was, but we will build upon Gawker’s legacy and triumphs—and learn from its missteps,” Goldberg, the founder and CEO of Bustle Digital Group, wrote in the memo obtained by Variety. “In so doing, we aim to create something new, vibrant, highly relevant, and worth visiting daily.” Goldberg also announced that former chief revenue officer of The Outline, Amanda Hale, will serve as the site’s publisher. Most of The Outline’s staff was laid off last week. “She is the right person for this important job, and I’m very excited to work with her,” Goldberg wrote. Gawker has been dormant since August 2016, when litigation bankrolled by Peter Thiel caused the site to go under. In the memo, Goldberg didn’t mention what would happen to Gawker’s archive of 200,000 articles, which were sold to him during the bankruptcy proceeding. A source told Variety that Goldberg plans to “maintain access to the Gawker content archive.”