Gawker founder challenges billionaire Facebook board member to public debate after lawsuit revelation

Gawker founder Nick Denton wants to take his media company's battle with billionaire investor Peter Thiel out of the shadows and into a more visible arena.

In a caustic open letter posted to Gawker late on Thursday, Denton challenged the Paypal co-founder to a one-on-one public debate either in person or "on some neutral platform such as Medium." 

"Just tell me where and when," the Gawker boss wrote. "We have our devices; you have yours."

The proposal comes after news broke earlier this week that Thiel had secretly backed Hulk Hogan's costly lawsuit against Gawker, for which the professional wrestler was awarded $140 million by a Florida judge in March. Gawker is in the process of appealing that decision.

After reports on Monday substantiated long-swirling rumors that the wrestler -- whose real name is Terry Bollea -- had a wealthy benefactor in his corner, Thiel came clean to the New York Times, telling the paper that he wasn't in it for the money.

"It's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence," he told the Times, calling the clandestine campaign “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done.”

Thiel took specific issue with a story posted to Gawker's now-defunct tech gossip blog Valleywag that outed him as gay, despite Thiel's alleged threats that he would destroy Gawker if the article was published. 

His subsequent vendetta appears to have been more than eight years in the making. 

"I thought we had all moved on," Denton jokingly responded. "Not realizing that, for someone who aspires to immortality, nine years may not be such a long time as it seems to most of us."

"Your revenge has been served well, cold and (until now) anonymously," he added.

Far from distancing himself from Valleywag's no-holds-barred mentality, Denton also runs through some of the blog's most celebrated scoops, including coverage of early Facebook leader Sean Parker's messy wedding and a debunking of Shiva Ayyadurai's claim that he invented email (Ayyadurai is also suing Gawker). 

In addition to Bollea's lawsuit, Thiel claims he is footing the legal bills of other less public parties who feel they've been wronged by the site's aggressive news coverage. His end game seems to be to put Gawker out of business for good. 

“I refuse to believe that journalism means massive privacy violations,” he told the Times. “Gawker has been a singularly terrible bully."

And the scorched-earth crusade may just do its job. A spokesperson for Gawker Media admitted that the site was exploring a sale in the event that the judge's ruling is upheld. Media watchers agree that the legal penalties, if demanded in full, could easily bankrupt the company. 

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The whole ordeal has spawned a far-reaching discussion over its implications for press freedoms and the precedent that Thiel might be setting for litigious billionaires everywhere -- particularly in Silicon Valley where rich tech moguls are unused to combative media attention.

Denton blamed the complacency of the tech media at large for giving Silicon Valley titans thin skin.

"For Silicon Valley, the media spotlight is a relatively recent phenomenon," he wrote."Most executives and venture capitalists are accustomed to dealing with acquiescent trade journalists and a dazzled mainstream media, who will typically play along with embargoes, join in enthusiasm for new products, and hew to the authorized version of a story."

Toward the end of the letter, he takes a more personal tone with the eccentric billionaire, appealing him to think of what his grudge could mean for the relationship between the tech industry and the greater media and general public.

"Peter, this is twisted. Even were you to succeed in bankrupting Gawker Media, the writers you dislike, and me, just think what it will mean," Denton writes. "With this diabolical decade-long scheme for revenge, you are redefining yourself as a comic-book villain."

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