Gawker's A.J. Daulerio opens up about his life — and the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that ruined it

A. J. Daulerio, former editor of Gawker.

(Image credit: John Pendygraft-Pool/Getty Images)

last updated 5 January 2017

It has been over four years since an envelope containing Hulk Hogan's sex tape arrived in Gawker's offices. Today, the website's former editor-in-chief, A.J. Daulerio, is 42, unemployed, and the bank has frozen his life savings of $1,500.

But how did it get this way? Daulerio laid everything bare to Esquire in a profile that details not just the fall of the influential website but, perhaps, the fall of Daulerio himself. Daulerio revealed to Esquire that he is "trying to kick a drug and booze addiction and [is] confronting a recovered memory" involving possible molestation as a child. Daulerio originally insisted that these facts be kept off-the-record, but eventually agreed to have them published.

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These moves allowed the staff to gel and traffic to soar, but they also enabled Daulerio to unravel. His former colleagues give the impression that they were too indebted to him to say anything about his behavior, so they went along for the ride. [John] Cook recalls a hazy, boozy midday outing to Belmont Park. [Leah] Beckmann had many nights out with her boss that didn't end until 4 a.m. One time, at a sex-toy party, she says, "A. J. was like, 'Do you want to eat acid?' And so we ate acid." And then in the late fall of 2012, Daulerio began a volatile five-month relationship with Cat Marnell, who wrote about her life as a drug-addled New York party girl in a Vice column. She was a kindred nightcrawler spirit. "We started our dates at 5 a.m. and wrapped at 10 a.m.," he says, "and then I went to work."Because Daulerio was "often completely MIA," [Emma] Carmichael says — sometimes for days — she was essentially the EIC of Gawker. When the envelope with the Hogan DVD showed up at the Gawker.com offices that October, Daulerio was on vacation. [Esquire]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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