It was more than just Gawker, it was a whole collection of blogs that I’d say were indeed ‘valuable’. The whole story is too much to convey in a post here, but Wikipedia has good (or, at least, comprehensive) articles about it.*
I’m what TwoPhonesOneKid calls a ‘centrist idiot’ in their peer comment (hey, look, I’m treating them with decorum!), and I don’t think it was more valuable than the NYT, but Gawker Media was a blog staple with a wide reach, and those blogs did real journalism in a wide range of fields in addition to click bait. Some of them arguably recovered under new ownership, but many did not.
I’m what TwoPhonesOneKid calls a ‘centrist idiot’ in their peer comment (hey, look, I’m treating them with decorum!), and I don’t think it was more valuable than the NYT, but Gawker Media was a blog staple with a wide reach, and those blogs did real journalism in a wide range of fields in addition to click bait. Some of them arguably recovered under new ownership, but many did not.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawker_Media, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollea_v._Gawker