• by Melynda Fuller , July 31, 2019

Bustle Digital Group has indefinitely postponed the relaunch of Gawker, reports the New York Post. The title was set to relaunch in September.

According to the report, the entire web site staff was laid off yesterday. That includes EIC Dan Peres, editorial director Carson Griffith, writer Nathan Hopper and sales executive Amanda Hale.

Peres was named EIC earlier this year. He was a top editor of Conde Nast’s Details for 15 years. Insiders told the NYP that attracting talent to the title has been a challenge.

The title has been plagued by troubles for some time, with its only two reporters quitting earlier this year after complaints that Griffith had made a range of offensive comments, many racist and classist, in the office. She was cleared during an internal investigation.

Another staffer, Ben Barna, joined the title from Interview and left after five months.

“It’s no secret that we have faced a number of challenges from the start,” BDG Chief Executive Bryan Goldberg stated. “We want to thank Dan Peres and the rest of the Gawker team, who have worked tirelessly on this project. We’ve made a number of acquisitions over the last year and intend to focus our efforts on those brands.”

A spokesperson told the NYP the company plans to focus its attention on its most recent acquisitions, which include Mic, The Outline, Nylon and Inverse.

BDG announced it had acquired Inverse just last week. Five staffers were laid off in that transaction.

Gawker was acquired by BDG at auction last summer for a reported $1.5 million after Gawker’s parent company fell into bankruptcy. BDG acquired the Gawker.com domain, social-media accounts and an archive of almost 200,000 articles.

At the time, Goldberg stated in a memo to staff: “You are probably wondering what happens next. The short answer is this — not much. We have no immediate plans to re-launch Gawker. For now, things will stay as they are.”

Univision acquired Gawker’s six sister sites for $135 million in 2017. The collection of website dubbed Gizmodo Media Group was acquired by media startup G/O Media last spring.