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Pat Fitzgerald's avatar

I witnessed another way articles and information disappears. When Gawker filed for bankruptcy, I was part of the team that covered it. A 2015 Gawker article that Sam Biddle wrote that referenced hacked emails from former Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton was deleted from the site without explanation during the bankruptcy. Lynton told us he had nothing to do with it. We assumed - but couldn’t prove - someone paid the bankruptcy trustee to take it down. After all, his job is to maximize $$ for creditors. Here’s the story if you’re interested.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gawker-is-for-sale-and-its-articles-could-be-deleted-1506956259?st=p73u5o3yg4nombz&reflink=article_copyURL_share

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Jack Crosbie's avatar

Huh! I didn't actually know about that one, that's wild!

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Sam Biddle's avatar

I would love to someday find out what the hell happened here. I dunno if it still is but for a long time that post was in Gawker’s robots.txt file, de-indexed from Google.

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Pat Fitzgerald's avatar

Me too. We went through a lot of extra vetting and BS on Randles's article just to get it out. Some of the old-school types in the newsroom kept pushing me about why we should care. "It's not the Library of Alexandria," was one comment that particularly stuck in my craw.

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