Gawker-apologism to frame Thiel as the monster destroying the truth-seeking independent journalists? What a truth-seeker the author is!
It can both be true that Gawker's individual bankruptcy was no big loss but that the way in which an ultra-wealthy person was able to crush a news outlet for reporting things he didn't like set a dangerous precedent for all journalism outlets.
Of course, the whole thing seems rather quaint now that nearly all media is owned by a handful of billionaires who are actively and increasingly controlling what gets released to the public.
Gawker had a lot of issues; they were not exactly the AP. But whether they are allowed to exist as a business should not be up the whim of one billionaire with a fragile ego.