“Under pressure from a $140 million legal judgment in favor of Hulk Hogan, Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, and is putting itself up for auction,” reports CNBC.

The story continues, “Global media company Ziff Davis has agreed to buy Gawker’s seven media brands and other assets, though Gawker’s sale will be conducted through a bankruptcy- court-supervised auction that may include other bidders, the company told CNBC.”

To read the full press release Gawker released today, please click here. To see Gawker’s bankruptcy filing, please click here.

Writes Peter Kafka at recode about this story:

“Ziff Davis itself is a company that has gone through the Chapter 11 process. The company was once a dominant force in the trade and hobbyist magazine business, but its fortunes declined along with the print industry, and it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008.

“Ziff Davis now operates a tech-centric stable of digital titles, including IGN, AskMen and PCMag, that it says reaches more than 100 million readers a month; [Ziff Davis CEO Vivek] Shah is a former Time Inc. exec.

“In theory, Gawker and [its owner, Nick] Denton are in this position because Gawker published excerpts of a 2012 sex tape featuring Hogan and the wife of one of his friends.

“But [Peter] Thiel, a billionaire who made his fortune by running PayPal, then making an early investment in Facebook, has made it clear that he funded Hogan’s lawsuit to punish Gawker and Denton for a series of posts the publisher made over the years.”