Nick Denton

It was later revealed in May 2016 that he had paid $10 million in legal expenses to finance several lawsuits brought by others against Denton and Gawker Media, including a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan. Denton publicly blamed Thiel several times for having planned to take down Gawker.com.

On 16 January 2014, the New York Post reported his upcoming marriage to actor Derrence Washington on May 31.

On October 4, 2012, Gawker published an extract from a leaked sex tape of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan. After Denton refused to comply with a cease-and-desist order from Hogan and a court injunction to remove the video, Hogan sued Gawker for violation of privacy. On March 18, 2016, the jury found in favor of Hogan and awarded him $115 million, which included $55 million in compensatory damages and $60 million for emotional distress. On March 21, the jury awarded Hogan an additional $25 million in punitive damages, including $10 million from Denton personally. Denton filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on August 1, 2016. On March 22, 2017, Hogan and Denton reached a settlement that allows Denton to emerge from personal bankruptcy.

On 28 October 2010, Denton published an anonymous kiss-and-tell piece entitled, "I Had a One-Night Stand with Christine O'Donnell". However, according to the writer, O'Donnell only slept naked with the anonymous writer and did not have sex with him. The National Organization for Women condemned the piece as "slut-shaming". NOW's president, Terry O'Neill, stated, "It operates as public sexual harassment. And like all sexual harassment, it targets not only O'Donnell, but all women contemplating stepping into the public sphere." Salon's Justin Elliott criticized the ad hominem nature of the article, tweeting "Today, we are all Christine O'Donnell." Gawker.com reportedly paid in the "low four figures" for the story. Denton defended it, praising its "brilliant packaging."

Denton was featured in the Sunday Times Rich List 2007 in position #502 with an estimated wealth of £140m (approximately $205m) based on the sale of his previous companies and the then-current value of Gawker Media. Denton lives in New York City.

In 2007, Denton's Valleywag editor Owen Thomas outed Silicon Valley businessman, Peter Thiel as gay in a post entitled "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people." In the comment section of Thomas's post, Denton speculated as to why Thiel kept "his personal life a secret from journalists... for so long." He named "a guy called Matt" as an alleged boyfriend. In response, Thiel called Valleywag the "Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda". Thiel called out the sites for "scar[ing] everybody" and for stifling the culture of Silicon Valley, which is "supposed to be about people who are willing to think out loud and be different."

Nicholas Guido Anthony Denton (born 24 August 1966) is a British Internet entrepreneur, journalist and blogger, the founder and former proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and was the managing editor of the New York-based Gawker.com, until a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan bankrupted the company. For years after starting Gawker Media in 2003, Denton ran the company out of his apartment in SoHo.