Gawker executive editor, editor-in-chief both resign after Conde Nast CFO story fiasco

After pulling down a story that apparently outed Conde Nast CFO Daniel Geithner, Gawker has come under increased scrutiny, with some media observers suggesting that it is at war with itself. That internal civil war reached a boiling point today when both Tommy Craggs, the site’s executive editor, and editor-in-chief Max Reed both resigned this morning.

This controversy began on Thursday when Jordan Sargent’s story about Geithner was published and instantly blasted by readers and journalists because Geithner is not a public figure. Even Gawker journalists criticized the story.

Then, Gawker CEO Nick Denton made the unprecedented decision to pull the story. That move was not supported by Gawker’s editorial staff, which even issued another statement denouncing the move and calling it an “unprecedented breach of the firewall” between the business side of the company and editorial.

Since Denton’s move seemed to completely change the environment at Gawker, Craggs and Reed announced today that they are resigning because “they could not possibly guarantee Gawker’s editorial integrity.”

Craggs stood by the Geithner story, even if it was questionable to publish it. In his memo to staffers, Craggs wrote that he was not notified that the higher-ups on the business end were voting on removing the story until after it happened.

“On Friday a post was deleted from Gawker over the strenuous objections of Tommy and myself, as well as the entire staff of executive editors,” Reed wrote in his memo to the partnership group. “That this post was deleted at all is an absolute surrender of Gawker’s claim to ‘radical transparency’; that non-editorial business executives were given a vote in the decision to remove it is an unacceptable and unprecedented breach of the editorial firewall, and turns Gawker’s claim to be the world’s largest independent media company into, essentially, a joke.”

Gawker did not say who would replace Craggs and Reed.

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