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Yeah, I don’t see it. Jezebel was mostly pop journalism with an at times dubiously feminist leaning. To prop them up not only as a valuable news source but ‘one of the last remaining feminist institutions’ is just silly. There are better, much more rigorous feminist news sources out there that aren’t focused exclusively on click-bait and outrage fuel.
Feminist.org has a list of a bunch, though some are outdated. https://feminist.org/resources/feminist-magazines/
Feminist.org has a list of a bunch, though some are outdated. https://feminist.org/resources/feminist-magazines/
that’s putting it rather generously–of their five general interest outlets for example (of which Jezebel, notably, is one), three are now defunct. several of their other listed outlets also aren’t particularly “feminist” leaning either except in the sense that they have a progressive or leftist orientation. this would in fact seem to illustrate that it’s a rather small pond Jezebel was in.
Are we really worst off without Pop-White-Feminism from a website that made articles about the virtue of beating their boyfriends? Eeerh… I don’t known, I’m not convinced.
And I know it’s the example everyone jumps to, but there’s a good reason why. This is still up. It was never taken down. Which means that it was okay to post and okay to keep up for them. No one thought there was something wrong with it.
REGARDLESS OF ALL THAT, THOUGH.
Let us not lose the sight of the fact that this is yet another fucking series of layoffs in this space. We are talking about people who just lost their whole fucking career, some of them worked there for years and now it’s gone.
These are people whose life has been turned upside down because of poor management and greed from the parent company. And this is nor funny, nor worth celebrating, nor anything good at all. It’s just depressing. It’s just something that keeps on fucking happening again and again.
I wish them luck. Maybe they can get together and form something independent and worker owned. Like a bunch of gaming journalists recently did. Because we are in a world where anything even remotely creative or artistic is bound to be fucked over cynical monetary reasons…
Are we really worst off without Pop-White-Feminism from a website that made articles about the virtue of beating their boyfriends? Eeerh… I don’t known, I’m not convinced.
This exactly. What’s more is, I think far too much energy has been spent lamenting the loss of Jezebel without working towards a more modern alternative whose roots aren’t firmly in shallow feminism and celebrity gossip. A lot of firms from this last wave of journalistic closures have spun off into things that reveal that the old publishers were one of the biggest problems with the journalism overall (See 404media, who interestingly put out an article much to the same effect as the OP) and from the sounds of it Jezebel was always one of the worst offenders.
Yes, we are worse off with less feminism. Unless the feminism in question excludes women, I’d argue for more intersectional feminism and for the evolution of what we already have.
As for the drive by claim. I’ll not deny the article might be, deservedly so, considered in bad taste, but I don’t see it as malicious. First, they quote the study that it is a response to:
Women are doing virtually everything these days that men are—working as doctors, lawyers, and rocket scientists; flying helicopters in combat; riding horses in the Kentucky Derby. And physically assaulting their spouses or partners.
Then they decide to make a joke about it:
According to a study of relationships that engage in nonreciprocal violence, a whopping 70% are perpetrated by women. So basically that means that girls are beating up their BFs and husbands and the dudes aren’t fighting back. With Amy Winehouse busting open a can of whupass on her husband last week, we decided to conduct an informal survey of the Jezebels to see who’s gotten violent with their men. After reviewing the answers, let’s just say that it’d be wise to never ever fuck with us.
Honestly, I didn’t get it either until the end:
He was, uh, totally asking for it.
They wrote a piece that made people very angry because what it said is terrible. I think that’s the point.
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Journalism layoffs have become something of a grim ritual, with dozens of talented, hardworking and well-sourced writers taking to social media to announce their need for new work whenever the industry turns the corner on a bad quarter.
Jezebel’s slow death over the past few years was exacerbated by the injection of private equity into the media industry, a medicine that has turned out to be worse than the disease.
They pioneered a voice-forward, irreverent and acerbic take on news, culture and women’s issues, advancing a tone and vocabulary that would have been unthinkable in print media, but which were the lingua franca of the internet.
The sites cultivated a profound loyalty from their readers, inviting them into a club of shared conviction and inspiring them to build their identities as feminists, thinkers and allies of the staff writers long before anyone learned the word “parasocial”.
These gambles paid off, not only in the careers of its alumni but in the work of its staff writers – now unemployed – whose angry, committed and morally lucid reporting over the past two years has been the rare bright spot of post-Dobbs abortion coverage.
Jezebel’s voice, its unabashed political commitment, its willingness to explore questions of freedom and dignity, right and wrong, and to risk making mistakes – these are not present in what remains of the media landscape.
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