Jezebel, the pioneering in-your-face feminist web site, is getting a second life. The publishers of indie music journal Paste have bought Jezebel and sister web site Splinter, with plans to resurrect each titles.
Josh Jackson, cofounder and editor in chief of Paste, mentioned the corporate acquired each titles on Monday, with plans to start publishing new content material on Jezebel as quickly as potential. Splinter, which was shuttered in 2019, can be up and operating in 2024, forward of what’s anticipated to be a extremely consequential — and bruising — presidential election.
The information comes lower than a month after G/O Media, citing “financial headwinds rattling [the media] trade,” shut down Jezebel and pink-slipped practically two dozen staffers, together with G/O Media editorial director Merrill Brown, who left the corporate.
Jackson instructed The New York Instances that he had been in contact with some Jezebel writers and plans to have new content material on the location as quickly as Wednesday. However as of midday ET, the tales on the homepage have been unchanged from early November.
Author Anna Holmes launched Jezebel as a sister web site to Gawker in 2007, a full decade earlier than the #MeToo motion, powered by social media, started to chip away at an entrenched however calcifying patriarchy. It shortly grew to become a must-read for a younger technology of third-wave feminists who gravitated to its bracing commentary on gender and racial politics. And its demise spurred a collection of wistful obituaries and earnest suppose items. In an interview with NPR, Holmes characterised the location’s 16-year life span as “a very good run” and famous that “plenty of the topics and the tone [of Jezebel] embedded themselves into the DNA of extra conventional or mainstream publications.”
However the roiling political local weather within the wake of the tip of Roe has recentered girls’s rights within the Zeitgeist. Jackson instructed The New York Instances that the “thought of there not being a Jezebel proper now simply didn’t appear to make sense.”
G/O Media shut down Jezebel after talks with greater than two dozen potential consumers fielded no real looking affords, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller mentioned in an e mail saying the location’s dissolution. Jackson mentioned he was not amongst those that had kicked the tires on Jezebel.
He co-founded Paste in 1998; in 2011 it was acquired by Wolfgang’s Vault, which restores audio and visible live performance recordings and in addition sells music memorabilia. Jackson declined to say how a lot he paid for Jezebel, however confirmed it was an all-cash provide.
Paste journal is ad-supported, however the path to profitability for Jezebel is unclear. The location has struggled financially beneath the tyranny of the web’s programmatic promoting mannequin that retains blue chip advertisers from showing subsequent to content material that could possibly be deemed controversial. And Jezebel’s founding editorial ethos was talking uncomfortable truths to the prevailing energy construction.
