The parent company for the far-left feminist online news and opinion magazine Jezebel shut down the website Thursday after a round of layoffs at G/O Media forced the paper’s closure.
The Daily Beast reported 23 people were laid off, including G/O Media’s editorial director, Merrill Brown.
“Unfortunately, our business model and the audiences we serve across our network did not align with Jezebel’s,” CEO Jim Spanfeller wrote in a staff memo. “And when that became clear, we undertook an expansive search for a new, perhaps better home that might ensure Jezebel a path forward.”
Jezebel was founded under Gawker in 2007 and sold to Univision in 2016. The outlet was acquired by G/O Media in 2019.
For years, the feminist website defended female genital mutilation, blind accusations of sexual misconduct, and the elimination of free expression.
In 2014, then-Jezebel writer Anna Merlan mocked skeptical coverage of Rolling Stone’s infamous fraternity gang rape story by a pair of male writers, including Reason Magazine’s Robby Soave, as “two guys who have no idea what they’re talking about and don’t believe it.”
“‘Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?’ Asks Idiot,” read Merlan’s headline.
In 2017, Rolling Stone ultimately reached a legal settlement with fraternity members who were wrongly accused of “the most significant false accusation of rape since the Duke Lacrosse hoax.”
Merlan wrote off Rolling Stone’s initial story in 2014 as a “case closed.” (Merlan also apparently finds cheap, reliable heating in the winter as an offensive exercise to “enrich a small group of evil s**theads.”)
Jezebel also became a popular outlet to cheer on overweight pop star Lizzo and the movement to glorify obesity under the banner of “body positivity.” The magazine published take after take after take after take after take after take, celebrating the queen of body positivity as a cultural icon for women to admire. Heart disease, meanwhile, remains the leading cause of death for women in America.
In 2014 Jezebel ran a feature on the all-girl Japanese pop group, “Chubbiness,” apparently dedicated to “being happy eating whatever the f**k they want in that Japanese cute ‘fuwa fuwa’ style as opposed to having assets that boys like to hold onto.” The writer, however, criticized the J-pop group as not going far enough in their commitment to plus-size activism.
“I’m not sure how body positive these groups are given that their identities and some of their dance moves in their videos are restricted to their appetites and not much else,” the author wrote. “But on the other hand, how often do we see big happy women singing and dancing without a godd-mn care in the world?”
