Feminist voice since height of blogosphere era is closing

NEW YORK >> Jezebel, the sharpedged feminist website that found an impassioned and devoted following at the height of the blogosphere era but ended up struggling with its business model, is shutting down after 16 years, its parent company announced Thursday.

It is the latest gender-focused media site to fold as the media industry struggles with plummeting digital advertising that has also cut into the profitability of major tech companies from Google to Facebook.

Bitch Media, which had a print magazine, website and podcast, closed last year after 25 years, citing sustainability.

The Washington Post folded The Lily, its freestanding publication on gender an identity issues, into its main website last year.

G/O Media said 23 staffers would be laid off, including Jezebel’s team, as part of a restructuring to cope with economic headwinds and a difficult digital advertising environment. The New York-based company also announced the departure of G/O Media editorial director Merrill Brown.

Launched in 2007 by Gawker Media, Jezebel established itself as an influential voice in feminist commentary years before the explosion of the #Metoo movement pushed issues of gender and power to the forefront of mainstream media coverage. The website combined searing commentary on gender politics with edgy pop culture coverage to build an audience craving an alternative to the frothy fashion magazines that dominated the landscape of media targeted at women.

The website appealed to readers because it combined style with serious news and commentary, said Kate Cox, program director for Poynter’s Leadership Academy for Women in Media. It covered political issues like abortion but gained the most buzz with its takedowns of celebrity culture and the fashion industries, helping make subjects like “body shaming” and “rape culture” part of the national discourse.

“It was totally unprecedented. Their blend of pop culture along with whip-smart writing made it a daily read,” Cox said. “It took women’s issues out of a niche brand and embraced the real pragmatic experience of women’s lives. It captured the dynamic but also captured the despair and the hard swallow and the cheeky energy that the women I knew at the time had.”

In a recent essay for The New Yorker, Jezebel’s founding editor-in-chief, Anna Holmes, wrote that launching Jezebel was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to create a women’s media website at a time when she “was disillusioned by the state of America’s women’s media.”

“I wanted it to combine wit, smarts, and anger, providing women — many of whom had been taught to believe that ‘feminism’ was a bad word or one to be avoided — with a model of critical thinking around gender and race which felt accessible and entertaining,” Holmes wrote.