Gawkerless

The news of the sale of Gawker Media and the closure of Gawker.com was a sad one for me. I consider myself very thankful and lucky that early in my writing career I had the opportunity to write for three Gawker sites (Kotaku, Gizmodo, and Gridskipper). These things happened after I had the chance to spend some time with Nick Denton (as well as Joel Johnson) on one of his visits to Tokyo — having lunch and then drinks in various spots around the city. What he was doing with his new media company was incredibly exciting for me — a budding writer — and I felt privileged to be asked to contribute to what he was building.

Considering my love of games, writing for Kotaku was certainly a highlight — and it’s how I met and later became friends with Brian Ashcraft, with whom I was lucky enough to contribute on a book we did together, called Arcade Mania, about Japan’s game centers. The site I contributed to the most though was Gridskipper, a now-defunct urban travel site that saw me contribute Tokyo-related posts (which made sense, as it was similar to the type of content I was covering on my personal blog).

A lot of crazy things have happened to Gawker.com and Gawker Media over the years, and I just want to thank Nick for keeping us entertained all these years, and for the support I got at that point in my life. Can’t wait to see what he’s planning next.