Gawker‘s top dogs are quitting.
Tommy Craggs, the executive editor of Gawker Media, and Max Read, the editor-in-chief of Gawker.com, are resigning from the company, says an announcement posted to Gawker Monday.
The resignations come in the nasty wake of Gawker‘s post on Condé Nast CFO David Geithner last week. Geithner, the brother of former Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner, was implicated in an arrangement with a gay porn star.
Gawker founder Nick Denton ultimately removed the post, but to the dismay of Gawker Media editorial employees, including Max Read, who was vehemently opposed to the post being taken down.
The gossipy website is fighting a lawsuit with Hulk Hogan. Hogan was irate when the site posted a 100-second video of him having sex with Heather Clem, the wife of his friend Bubba the Love Sponge.
The case has been delayed indefinitely. But it was scheduled to head to trial in Florida on July 6. A new jury trial date has not been set.
In a letter to staff, Craggs explained that he told company executives that he’d have to quit if the site removed a story he edited and approved. He revealed that advertisers such as Discover and BF Goodrich were threatening to bail.
“All I got at the end of the day was a workshopped email from Denton, asking me to stay on and help him unfuck the very thing he’d colluded with the partners to fuck up,” Craggs said, explaining that the now famous “vote” happened while he was on a flight to California.
If reporters didn’t know how Craggs felt about them, they do now.
“You writers are this company,” he wrote at the close of his letter. “You are funny. You are smart. You are vital. You are honest and righteous and pissed-off and stupid, so galactically stupid, and you commit hilarious blunders and you perform great, honking prodigies of journalism that make me proud to have sat in a room with you. Often you do all these things in the same day. You are this company. Nick forgot that, and I hope he one day remembers it. You are, you will always be, the best argument for a company that no longer deserves you.”
Read also had a poignant, albeit shorter, letter to execs.
He said the removal of the story turned Gawker into a laughingstock.
“That non-editorial business executives were given a vote in the decision to remove it is an unacceptable and unprecedented breach of the editorial firewall, and turns Gawker’s claim to be the world’s largest independent media company into, essentially, a joke,” he wrote.
In a lengthier letter to staff, he told them he was in awe of them.
“I cannot imagine working with a sharper, smarter, funnier, weirder, finer group of humans than the ones I have been lucky enough to inherit, hire, and poach here,” he wrote. “I hope I have made this clear enough, but I am consistently and constantly in awe of every one of you, of your skill and your inventiveness.”
He also told reporters he hopes to have a drunken goodbye.
“I hope at some point over the next week or so I will have a drunken opportunity to tearfully and inappropriately corner each one of you to inarticulately communicate to you my gratitude and admiration and love,” he said.
A funny aside: He made fun of Denton’s so-called Town Hall meeting, writing, “I will be at the editorial meeting with Tommy; I’m not sure I can stomach whatever town hall Nick has planned.”
In a sentimental line that could pass for a suicide note, he added, “The last year of my life, and especially the last six months, have probably been the happiest and most fun.”
A Gawker media employee told The Mirror, “Of course none of the women are quitting. Because we’re not fucking babies.”
