A holding company owned by Bryan Goldberg, the founder of the websites Bleacher Report and Bustle, has been picked as the successful bidder for the assets of former media gossip site Gawker, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. An auction for Gawker was held yesterday in the Manhattan offices of Ropes & Gray LLP, the law firm that has represented Gawker’s former publisher as it has been liquidating in bankruptcy over the last two years. Goldberg placed a high bid of $1.35 million, one of these people said. The assets for sale include the Gawker domain, social media accounts and nearly 200,000 of its published articles. Goldberg, 35 years old, outbid Mineola, N.Y.-based marketing firm Didit Inc., whose $1.13 million offer had led the bidding for the blog, these people said. He said that “there are no firm plans in place at the moment” for Gawker going forward and said he didn’t expect that to change before the end of the year.
