Jezebel Is Shutting Down
After 16 years of shrewd reporting and cultural commentary, the website Jezebel is shutting down. In a memo sent to G/O Media staff on Thursday, the company’s CEO Jim Spanfeller wrote that he made “the very, very difficult decision to suspend publication” in light of ongoing financial challenges. Adding that the choice was “in NO WAY a reflection of the Jezebel editorial team,” Spanfeller explained that G/O had tried to sell the publication but “despite every effort, we could not find Jez a new home.” According to the Daily Beast, the outlet’s 23-person editorial staff was laid off in a meeting Wednesday morning, along with G/O’s editorial director Merrill Brown.
News: G/O Media is "suspending publication of @Jezebel," C.E.O. Jim Spanfeller emails staff: pic.twitter.com/stQVfocMPV
— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) November 9, 2023
Jezebel was founded as part of Gawker in 2007, as a sharp foil to women’s magazines. It was sold to Univision when Gawker shuttered in 2016 and has lived under the G/O umbrella since 2019 when private equity firm Great Hill Partners bought a bundle of web outlets from Univision and formed G/O as a holding company. Jezebel’s folding comes amid high and well-publicized tensions between G/O Media and its editorial properties — most recently, over G/O’s increasingly abundant reliance on AI, a strategy the company has continued to pursue despite strong objections from its writers and editors. On top of that, Spanfeller reportedly started evaluating writers based on algorithmically driven “scorecards” that meted out points based on traffic and engagement, seemingly prioritizing quantity over quality. Staffers have also complained that he blocked internal opportunities for growth, while hiring and promoting his daughter within a year. In August, Jezebel’s most recent editor-in-chief Laura Bassett resigned, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that “the company that owned us refused to treat my staff with basic human decency.” She is one of seven editor-in-chiefs to quit G/O this year alone.
I guess the cat's out of the bag. I have reluctantly resigned from Jezebel, because the company that owned us refused to treat my staff with basic human decency. I will love and support my writers til the end and am so grateful I got to shepherd this site through the end of Roe.
— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) August 21, 2023
Of Jezebel’s run, Spanfeller wrote that “their urgent, breakthrough coverage of reproductive rights in this post-Roe era, as well as other key issues core to modern women, affirmed the brand’s storied legacy as the website that changed women’s media forever.” Despite shutting down the site’s operations, he claimed that he hasn’t “given up on Jezebel” — though his decision to offload its entire staff suggests otherwise.
Jezebel was the site that helped launch my career. It was a place where women could unabashedly write about culture, politics, and everything with voice, humor, and the whole range of human emotions. The fact that it was killed by inept men is truly a metaphor.
— Lyz Lenz (@lyzl) November 9, 2023
This is a huge loss. I've read Jezebel since it began. It survived so many media deaths and buy outs and mergers and was still putting out excellent writing and journalism, especially around abortion. RIP to a great site. https://t.co/RjLOuqSPSy
— Alison Leiby (@AlisonLeiby) November 9, 2023
A great loss for all of us. Jezebel has been doing wonderful reporting, and I’ve relied on the likes of @SusanRinkunas and @kylietcheung for years. https://t.co/UdwTYYKhcz
— Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) November 9, 2023
Reading and eventually working for @Jezebel has been a great joy of my way too online life. My current coworkers and the editorial staff of previous iterations of the website shaped the way I think about and move through the beautiful, awful, and weird world around me. ❤️????
— Kady Ruth A (@kady_ruth) November 9, 2023
Today is yet another really rough day in media; dozens of my Vice colleagues are being laid off globally and we just got news that Jezebel, where I worked for years, is being shut down.
— Anna Merlan (@annamerlan) November 9, 2023
I’m a weird too-genuine mix of sad and proud of all the people who made Jezebel https://t.co/ZZQ4qW5Xkt
— Clover Hope (@clovito) November 9, 2023
Jezebel was a light in the darkness and a publication I looked to for incisive coverage on abortion rights and sexual violence up until the last moment. Thank you to everyone there — thank you to @kylietcheung who is one of my favorite and most essential reporters to follow https://t.co/0AzS8rdZ5Z
— Kat Tenbarge (@kattenbarge) November 9, 2023
I am not exaggerating when I say @Jezebel is the reason why I became a journalist. Reading it completely changed my perspective on so many things: on abortion, on sex, on how I navigated the world as a woman in general. I owe it a huge debt. Lots of us do. https://t.co/WsAbSgVMEU
— Ej Dickson (@ejdickson) November 9, 2023
i remember being on my laptop reading jezebel in my dorm room having my mind blown by the possibilities of what great journalism could look like. solidarity with one of the best, most ambitious sites out there, that inspired so many of us
— molly taft (@mollytaft) November 9, 2023
A true gut punch. Jezebel was really that girl and, along with sites like Gawker, made me fall in love with smart, incisive, and funny cultural writing... a world without either of them is not a world i want to live in! RIP you all deserved better f G/O media https://t.co/vSnMAcAKS2
— Chris Murphy (@christress) November 9, 2023
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