John Cook is the executive editor of the Special Projects Desk, which produces investigative work across all of Gizmodo Media Group's web sites.
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A lot of journalists are still shuddering with glee at news that Sean Hannity was among Michael Cohen’s legal clients. It is definitely a fun little moment, and it’s always satisfying to see conspiratorial suspicions blazingly confirmed and laid bare. Here is this crooked little bagman targeted by the feds, here is…
In the summer before I entered 7th grade, my mother signed me up for a month-long sports camp run by Episcopal High School, the private boarding school just up the street from our home in Alexandria, Va. My dad wasn’t around when I was a kid, and the only sport I had played or demonstrated any interest in was soccer,…
In January, Monica Crowley, a former Nixon acolyte expected to be nominated to the incoming Trump administration’s National Security Council, removed herself from consideration after revelations that she had plagiarized significant portions of her doctoral thesis and a 2012 book. Two months later, Crowley was back in…
Today, Gizmodo’s parent company, Gizmodo Media Group, filed a Freedom of Information Act complaint in a New York federal district court against the Department of Justice, seeking the warrant applications that the FBI used to justify surveillance against Trump campaign officials and their associates.
Thirteen members of the International Women’s Day Strike were arrested outside of Trump Tower in Manhattan this earlier this afternoon, according to the NYPD.
As the last few weeks have demonstrated, good journalism requires good sources. The election of Donald Trump, despite scandal after scandal, made it seem as if true and accurate reporting about public figures had lost its power to make a difference. But the tumult and chaos of the first month of Trump’s presidency…
Most publishers of news and information have policies governing their relationships to advertisers. Generally speaking, these policies are tailored to suit the goals of those publishers and the expectations of their audiences. Some publishers feel comfortable working closely with advertisers to generate stories and…
Gizmodo Media Group’s web properties practice honest, conversational journalism about stories—whimsical or serious, joyous or grotesque—that matter, or should matter, to our readers. Some stories rely on our own reporting and ideas, and some respond to news generated elsewhere. The same rules apply.
I sent this note to Gawker Media’s editorial staff this morning:
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Losers need heroes. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is, himself, no loser. He was born the scion of a label empire and slid into political life on greased skids. He never wanted for anything, or had to work particularly hard to get where he is. But oh what he has accomplished with the gift of noble birth!
It is 1986. We are 13- and 14-year-olds, rank-smelling in unwashed teenager jeans, unsupervised and latch-keyed after school, huddled around the face of the future: The screen of a first-generation Apple Macintosh personal computer. Within the machine's non-dairy creamer-colored casing is a malleable visual playground…
As delightful as it's been to watch Rupert Murdoch's British fiefdom slowly drown in a foul swamp of wickedness and criminality, it's worth remembering that all good reporters are amoral monsters and that without a lot of highly questionable behavior on the part of sordid hacks around the world, we wouldn't know half…
Yesterday the Associated Press published a lengthy profile of "John," the secretive CIA agent who led the effort to locate and kill Osama bin Laden. The CIA asked the AP not to report John's full name or certain biographical details that might identify him, and the AP complied. But internet spy-hunter and data…
Jowly asshole Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, is a security-obsessed paranoiac who spies on his employees, installed blast-resistant plexiglass in his office windows, carries a concealed weapon, and travels with a full-time retinue of bodyguards. All of which may help explain why the cops were called to his New…
A New York Times story this morning about poor Fabrice Tourre, the colossal dick who sold fraudulent mortgage securities for Goldman Sachs, is based in part on secret emails between Tourre and his attorneys that the Times obtained from some weird ex-hippie artist who says she got them from some dude who found them in…
