but I do want to encourage more introspection from the editors of sites like these. Even if it's only because he was hoisted by his own petard.

Don't believe it for a minute.

Brian Lam feeling bad about stealing an iPhone

Adrien Chen sorry/not sorry about the Lucidending bullshit

Even News of the World printed a retraction every now and then. That doesn't mean they weren't subhuman douchebags. It works like this:

1) Gawker does something horrible

2) That horrible thing ruins lives

3) Gawker faces scathing press

4) Gawker pretends to be introspective so that they can be in front of the story

5) Lather, rinse, repeat

Gawker, publicly:

As if being an unpaid intern wasn't bad enough, now a federal judge in New York has ruled that individuals who don't get paid for their work aren't protected by the New York City Human Rights Law and therefore can't bring a sexual harassment claim against their employers.

http://gawker.com/unpaid-intern-not-a-real-employee-cant-sue-for-sexual-1442902764

Gawker, in sworn affidavits:

None of our internships were paid, and the interns understood that it was an unpaid position. We had one or two paid interns at the launch of the site, but we stopped paying the next interns that arrived in 2009. None of the subsequent interns complained that they were not paid since they understood that it was an unpaid internship from the beginning…

http://pando.com/2014/02/21/revealed-gawkers-sworn-affidavits-explaining-why-its-greedy-interns-didnt-deserve-to-be-paid/

Never Never Gawker Ever.

I've been asked many times if I would post Sacco's tweet all over again, and I still don't know how to answer. Would I post the tweet again? Sure. Would I post the tweet knowing it's going to cause an incredibly disproportionate personal disaster for Justine Sacco? No. Would I post the tweet knowing it could happen? Now we're in dicey territory, and I'm thinking of ghosts: If you had a face-to-face sit-down with all of the people you've posted about, how many of THOSE would you do again? We're wading through swamps and thorns, here.

That shit right there is (5). "Would I ruin a life again? Absolutely. But I'd make sure to write the article about how I felt bad about it ahead of time to get ahead of the news cycle."