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Jezebel: Feminist media site shuts down after 16 years (www.bbc.com)

submitted 7 months ago by Salamendacious@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Feminist media site Jezebel is suspending publication, as its owner reckons with a downturn in online advertising.

G/O Media chief Jim Spanfeller announced the move in a memo to staff, calling it an "excruciating" decision.

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[-] PeachMan@lemmy.world 80 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

You might not care much about Jezebel, but their parent company, G/O Media, also owns Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Deadspin, The Root, The A.V. Club, The Takeout, The Onion, The Inventory, and Quartz.

So if you like any of those (Lemmy fucking loves The Onion, right?) then this news should concern you a bit.

Also, RIP Jezebel. Sometimes they were edgy and weird for no reason but they also did some solid reporting over the years.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 13 points 7 months ago

As much as I like the onion, I have no clue what their business model is. Making funny headlines that nobody ever clicks on doesn't make money.

The others never seemed that useful.

[-] shrodes@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Last I heard I think they had lost or fired 7 Editor in Chiefs across their holdings in the past 8 months or so. From what I’ve heard they are run pretty terribly for the people that work there and G/O just generally suck.

The former Kotaku EIC in particular did not have nice things to say about them on The Games Press podcast

[-] cbarrick@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

I'm calling it now.

The A.V. Club, Gizmodo, and Kotaku are getting merged in 2024.

[-] dan1101@lemm.ee 5 points 7 months ago

I always saw Jezebel as sort of celebrity tabloid, guess I wasn't there in the golden days or just didn't give it a chance.

[-] realharo@lemm.ee -1 points 7 months ago

It's a bit funny because people on Lemmy seem to viscerally hate all online advertising and everything connected to it, yet here many of them are, lamenting the end of a company caused by not enough ad revenue.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 10 points 7 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Feminist media site Jezebel is suspending publication, as its owner reckons with a downturn in online advertising.

Founded in 2007 under the Gawker Media umbrella, Jezebel pioneered the sharp, dishy coverage that came to characterise many digital upstarts.

Mr Spanfeller said he had hoped G/O - which also publishes sites such as The Onion, Jalopnik and Gizmodo - would be able to steer through "dark times" in the industry, but "could hold out no longer".

In 2020, a union representing writers at G/O called on the firm's private equity owners to replace Mr Spanfeller, saying that traffic to its sites had fallen under his leadership, according to a Wall Street Journal report at the time.

"This callous layoff has everything to do with G/O Media's ineffectual management and nothing to do with the talent of our fellow workers, who should still be here with us," said Writers Guild of America East members at The Onion, which was also affected by the job cuts.

"A well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude," the union said.

The original article contains 556 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

Are there any alternatives?

[-] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 2 points 7 months ago

Never heard of it. Is it the good type of feminist media or the awful type (ex: Buzzfeed)?

[-] V17@kbin.social 31 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Imo it's the latter. It didn't start that way, but in the last decade they gradually shifted to being simply inflammatory on purpose because that brings clicks, and on top of that they regularly did dumb shit like complain about sexualization and male gaze one week (often, though not always, legitimately, but mostly it was literally just complaining without any further insight, which I personally don't care bout) and next week publish an article with photos of top male bulges in some sport that, apart from the gender being swapped, was literally worse than what they complained about with regards to sexualizing women.

Personally I say good riddance, but I'm biased by a deep dislike for people who use identity politics to create divisive clickbait.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 10 points 7 months ago

You phrased it a lot better than I could.

[-] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 months ago

Yup, that trash can go to the dump then. Thanks for the appraisal.

[-] NAXLAB@lemmy.world 26 points 7 months ago

For what it's worth, every article I've seen from them was pretty poignant, relevant, and funny.

[-] notthebees@reddthat.com 10 points 7 months ago

Somewhere in between. It doesn't deserve to be shut down though.

Kinja blogs as a whole have been going down in quality ever since spanfeller took over. (I go on jalopnik and gizmodo a lot).

this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023

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