Mysterious benefactor named "F" restores The Hook website

"The content will stay online indefinitely. We will not and cannot be influenced."

A story recently published in the Washington Post [“A newspaper vanished from the internet. Did someone pay to kill it?”], along with efforts by my Hook colleagues to draw attention to the article, appears to have prompted a mysterious benefactor to restore The Hook website. Washington Post reporter Paul Fahri tells The DTM that he received an anonymous email from someone calling themselves "F."

"The Hook has been restored at https://readthehook.net," F wrote. " We will remain private and keep the website online against any pressure."

[Update: 10.15.24: the new .net Hook site is offline.]

As detailed in the Washington Post, The Hook website, which had remained online for nearly a decade after the paper closed in 2013, was suddenly shut down this past June. An investigation launched by my former Hook colleagues and I revealed that the publishers of C-Ville Weekly, who owned the rights to the Hook website, had sold readthehook.com and its content to an anonymous buyer for an undisclosed …