Gawker.com will "reboot" on Monday, a week and a half after publishing a widely decried article outing a married media executive, and its parent company may even get a new name.
Founder Nick Denton plans to relaunch the site, which has been publishing fewer stories since the scandal began, with a heightened focus on newsworthiness over salaciousness, according to a report from Digiday. He told staffers at a Thursday meeting the new Gawker.com would be "20 percent nicer" than its previous iteration, Capital New York reported.
The site's parent company, Gawker Media, may rebrand to reflect the new editorial mission and distance itself from Gawker.com. Gawker Media owns a total of eight sites, including Jezebel and Deadspin.
“We have an awesome portfolio,” Denton told Digiday. “We produce a lot of drama. And sometimes, we become the story. We don’t want Gawker.com to be limited by the needs of the company. And there is a strong argument for a company name that is not the same as Gawker.com.”
Denton has told Gawker.com staffers that if they're unhappy with the reboot, they can quit and receive full severance pay.
The site has been reeling ever since July 16, when it published a story outing Condé Nast's CFO. The site's two top editors, Tommy Craggs and Max Read, resigned in protest, condemning the decision by Gawker's managing partnership to take down the post over the objections of the site's editorial staff.
"That this post was deleted at all is an absolute surrender of Gawker’s claim to 'radical transparency,'" Read said.