On the morning of August 3, Daulerio decided he couldn’t hold the story any longer. He sent the following message to Sterger:

Okay, here's the deal: I'm very close to running your Favre allegations today. I've spoken to the Jets about this. So let me know how you want to proceed, please. I'd prefer you were on the record about this stuff, but I understand if you don't want to be. However, I do have our email conversations we had and, frankly, that's enough to get this started. Not trying to dick you over, but, there was no way I was going to sit on it forever, either. So lemme know.

Sterger responded from her smartphone, which was working erratically: “I can... as soon as I get this [phone] back and running… or you could meet me in person on my way to studio in a few hours.” Other than that response, Daulerio heard no more from Sterger.

The next day, at 10:50 a.m., Daulerio posted the story and included the text messages he and Sterger had exchanged the day before. In his post, Daulerio added: “Maybe those photos will surface at this point since I assume many people would like to hear her side of this story.” ^[12] The post had almost 727,000 pageviews.

Several weeks later, someone contacted Daulerio via email and said he had files of the photos and voice messages that Favre had sent. He was willing to hand them over to Deadspin , but he wanted $12,000 in compensation . Daulerio had paid for materials before, but usually token amounts. This was a lot of money.

Daulerio contacted legal director Darbyshire. He had a clear understanding of her publication guidelines, but wanted her opinion on this specific situation. She was not enthusiastic. He already had the story, she noted. What would the pictures add? She also mentioned the risk of a lawsuit—from either Favre or Sterger. Darbyshire asked whether Daulerio was willing to go to prison over a photo of a penis just to protect a source. “I was concerned about running the images if there was any suspicion that they had been obtained by theft or other illegal means and if we were, in offering to pay for them, soliciting someone to break the law,” she says. ^[13]

Daulerio knew he would have to get sign-off from Gawker founder Denton before he could pay for the photos. He would also like Denton’s view on whether to publish the explicit pictures. Daulerio himself was in no doubt: “I’d mortgage the site for this. This is like Monica Lewinsky’s dress for Drudge ,” he told a reporter. ^[14] But was this an issue worth fighting for? What about the payment—was that justified? Was there a need to publish the actual photos themselves? Finally, the legal threat was real. Was he prepared to run the risk or pay the price if found liable?