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Tear a tanktop in half today for Terry Bollea, the entertainer better known as Hulk Hogan, who has died at age 71. Though he was a towering icon of the 1980s professional wrestling scene and seamlessly transitioned into celebreality TV in the aughts, Bolleas most lasting contribution to our culture may have been what he has done to digital publishing. Bolleas star had diminished considerably by 2012, when blog-era media giant Gawker published a brief clip from a stealthily recorded sex tape of Hogan and Heather Clem, then-wife of Bolleas then-best friend, radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge. The clip was featured in a post by former Gawker editor in chief AJ Daulerio, a meditation on celebrity sex tapes. Just days after the sex tapes publication, Hogan sued for emotional distress and invasion of privacy. For its part, Gawker defended its inclusion of the clip by arguing that the footage was newsworthy, considering Hogan’s celebrity status and past comments on his sex life. In March 2016, a Florida jury found in favor of Hogan, awarding him $115 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages. The verdict ultimately bankrupted Gawker, hastening an end to digital medias freewheeling blog era. (The website was revived in 2021 under owner Bryan Goldberg, but shuttered again just two years later.) Perhaps more shocking than the verdict itself, however, was the revelation of who paid for the lawsuit in the first place: Two months after the smoke cleared, Forbes reported that tech billionaire Peter Thiel had been bankrolling Bollea. The former Paypal Mafia member spent roughly $10 million on the lawsuit, apparently with the aim of destroying Gawker, as revenge for outing him as gay in a 2007 post. Thiels involvement raised concerns that the victory over Gawker could become a playbook for extremely wealthy individuals to silence media outletsa First Amendment nightmare. The New Yorker, for instance, warned at the time that the verdict could pave the way for a war against the press. And those concerns have since proven well-founded. Within a year, the Gawker Effect, as coined by journalist Margaret Sullivan had cast a chilling pall over the media environment. Music reporter Jim DeRogatis said a number of publishers passed on his bombshell investigation into sexual abuse claims against singer R. Kelly, citing concerns over potential libel lawsuits. Reporter Kim Masters wrote in October 2017 about her difficulty trying to find an outlet who would touch her investigation into allegations that Amazon Studios executive Roy Price had made inappropriate sexual remarks. Even the weakest of legal claims, she recalled, triggered genuine fear among editors and lawyers, and Price eventually hired Charles Harder, the attorney who defended Bollea. (The investigations eventually ran in BuzzFeed and The Information, respectively.) Many more blockbuster lawsuits against media outlets have followed in the years since. Blackwater Founder Erik Prince has sued The Intercept multiple times over its coverage of his activities; while the cases were dismissed, they successfully drained the publication of time and money (and effectively diminished their capacity to expend resources on further investigations). In 2020, right-wing provocateur group Project Veritas sued The New York Times for defamation, over publishing legal documents describing the groups deceptive practices, tying up the Times in court for years. More recently, Elon Musks X filed a defamation lawsuit against the left-leaning Media Matters for America in 2023, claiming it manufactured images showing ads on X placed alongside neoNazi content on the platform, with the aim of driving advertisers away. The publication countersued in March, accusing Musk and X of bringing “abusive,” costly and meritless lawsuits to punish Media Matters for the crime of doing journalism. (Those suits are currently still winding their way through courts; in the meantime, the organization has laid off at least a dozen staffers, citing legal costs.) And of course, suing news organizations has become a cornerstone of Donald Trumps strategic response for unflattering coverage. Just since last winter, he has sued ABC over George Stephanopouloss on-air claim that Trump has been found liable for raperather than the more accurate term sexual abusesettling for $15 million plus legal fees, he has successfully sued CBS for $16 million, alleging a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris was unfairly edited, and just last week, he filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its parent company for a story linking him to Jeffrey Epstein. Any outlet that cant afford to defend itself in court now knows not to break any unflattering news about Trumpor any other public figure who might be backed by wealthy benefactors with an ax to grind. Whether Bollea would approve of all this or notand udging by his professed admiration for Trump, he certainly mightthe dire current state of U.S. media is his true legacy.Whatcha gonna do when Hulkamania runs wild on YOU? he used to ask wrestling opponents. Nearly a decade after Bolleas lawsuit destroyed Gawker, newsrooms across the country are still grappling with that question.
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E-Commerce
President Trump has mocked Stephen Colbert’s cancellation and even sued 60 Minutes. Still, the writers of South Park don’t seem too worried about potentially becoming his next target. After skipping the 2024 election season, Comedy Central’s long-running animated show is back on air for its 27th season, just in time to cover President Trump’s second term in office. While the serieswhose creators just closed a $1.5 billion streaming dealhas not shied away from mocking pop culture and political figures in the past (previous iterations of Trump as president include Mr. Garrison, a schoolteacher who later runs for president against Hillary Clinton and wins), the creators are directly targeting the current president this season, going so far as using his real face in place of their traditional animated renderings. In a short 22 minutes, the episode touched on some of the most controversial recent events in the past few weeks, including tariffs on Canada, the Jeffrey Epstein case, the Paramount-Skydance merger, and CBS’s cancellation of The Late Show. To top it off, a scene of the naked president features a small penis (albeit a cartoon one), twisting the knife even more. Comedy Central, the cable TV channel on which the series airs, is owned by Paramount Global. Real-life faces are back Skipping a caricaturized version of the president, South Park opted to use a real image of Trump, cut open like a marionette when speaking, although the artistic choice is famously not new. In the past, the show has opted for real-life-picture cutouts of certain celebrities and public figuresincluding some infamous ones. The series website describes such portrayals as “more of a personal decision” from the show’s creators. According to fan roundups collected online, the celebrities and public figures who have been featured with their real-life cutouts include Ben Affleck, Tony Danza, Christina Aguilera, Jeffrey Dahmer, Gene Siskel, Princess Diana, Adolf Hitler, Walter Matthau, Allen Ginsberg, Tiny Tim, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr., Mao Zedong, Michael Landon, Jerry Garcia, Saddam Hussein, Mel Gibson, Jimmy Stewart, George Burns, and now, notably, Donald Trump. In addition to bringing back the marionette-like real-life cutout, the show also revived its in-bed-with-Satan trope. Trump is pictured undressing before climbing into bed with the Devil, an apparent ode to the show’s 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, which featured Saddam Hussein in a similar situation. [Image: Comedy Central] Not everyone is happy about the episode While many users on social media have praised South Parks season debut, those in support of the president seem less content with the episode. “South Park has gone woke. They must go broke,” reads a typical response on X. As expected, the current administration is also not delighted with the show’s creative direction. Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, told Entertainment Weekly that the “show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.” Trump has yet to directly respond to the episode.
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E-Commerce
Hasbro Inc (NASDAQ:HAS), the brand responsible for iconic games like Monopoly, Jenga, Magic: The Gathering, saw its shares tick upwards over 3% in pretrading on Wednesday. The uptick came just after the company reported its second quarter earnings of $1.30 per share for the second quarter, beating the analyst expectations of $0.78 per share.And, despite a 1% year-over-year decrease, Hasbro’s adjusted revenue was posted at $980.8 million, also beating analysts $874.66 million projection.While sales have been notably down for toy and gaming companies, Hasbro has managed to offset some of the volatility due to financial strains and tariffs. While tariffs represent a headwind for the business, we are compensating for these costs through a combination of cost reductions, rebalancing our marketing spend, diversifying our supplier mix and implementing some targeted pricing actions,” Hasbros CEO, Chris Cocks, said on the companys earnings call, per CNBC.The brand is also clearly leaning into its digital games, most notably, Monopoly Go! The game, which launched in 2023, has quickly become the most popular digital board game. It contributed $44 million in the second quarter.But the biggest driver of Hasbro’s recent earnings has been Magic:The Gathering. That’s thanks to a recently released Magic set: Final Fantasy Universes Beyond Expansion. The set dropped in June and almost instantly shattered records, earning $200 million in one day to become the fastest-selling expansion in Magic history.The Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment of Hasbro, which encompasses both Magic games and Monopoly Go!, saw overall revenue increase 16% year-over-year.Last year, Cocks spoke to the popularity of digital games and what it meant for the brand. “As we look at the business of play, it’s clear that digital is here to stay and a bigger factor than ever in how successful toy and game companies will grow and strengthen their brands,” Cocks said, noting that the brand was years ahead of its competitors. Still, the fact that Magic games remain popular shows that community is equally as important as digital entertainment.That sense of community is something other gaming companies seem acutely aware of, too. Mattel’s VP and global head of games Ray Adler recently told Fast Company about the brand’s newly introduced Uno Social Club a gaming and nightlife experience. Gen Z already loves Uno, Adler said. Theyve been playing it online, at parties, everywhere. What they dont always have are opportunities to connect in the real world. So we asked: What if game night could be a whole experience?Hasbro’s stock was down 1.1% in afternoon trading Wednesday, but the brand raised its full-year guidance for 2025. It now expects mid-single-digit revenue, and predicts earnings between $1.17 billion and $1.2 billion.
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E-Commerce
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