''Jezebel'' is a US-based
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
featuring news and cultural commentary geared towards women. It was launched in 2007 by
Gawker Media
Gawker Media LLC (formerly Blogwire, Inc. and Gawker Media, Inc.) was an American online media company and blog network. It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and was based in New York City. Incorporated in the Cayman Isla ...
under the editorship of
Anna Holmes
Anna Holmes is an American writer and editor. In 2007, she founded the Gawker Media women-focused site Jezebel.
Early life and education
Holmes was born in California and studied journalism at New York University.
Career
Holmes was a staff writ ...
as a
feminist counterpoint to traditional
women's magazine
This is a list of women's magazines from around the world. These are magazines that have been published primarily for a readership of women.
Currently published
*'' 10 Magazine'' (UK - distributed worldwide)
*''Al Jamila'' (Saudi Arabia)
*'' All ...
s. After the breakup of Gawker Media, the site was purchased by
Univision Communications and later acquired by
G/O Media
G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company that runs ''Gizmodo'', ''Kotaku'', ''Jalopnik'', '' Deadspin'', ''Lifehacker'', '' Jezebel'', '' The Root'', '' The A.V. Club'', ''The Takeout'', '' The Onion'', and ''The Inventory''.
Hist ...
.
History
''Jezebel'' was launched on May 21, 2007, as the 14th
Gawker Media
Gawker Media LLC (formerly Blogwire, Inc. and Gawker Media, Inc.) was an American online media company and blog network. It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and was based in New York City. Incorporated in the Cayman Isla ...
blog.
[Stephanie D. Smith, Irin Carmon. "Memo Pad." '']Women's Wear Daily
''Women's Wear Daily'' (also known as ''WWD'') is a fashion-industry trade journal often referred to as the "Bible of fashion". Horyn, Cathy"Breaking Fashion News With a Provocative Edge" ''The New York Times''. (August 20, 1999). It provides inf ...
'', May 21, 2007. According to founding editor
Anna Holmes
Anna Holmes is an American writer and editor. In 2007, she founded the Gawker Media women-focused site Jezebel.
Early life and education
Holmes was born in California and studied journalism at New York University.
Career
Holmes was a staff writ ...
, who had previously worked at ''
Glamour'', ''
Star'', and ''
InStyle
''InStyle'' was an American monthly women's fashion magazine founded in 1994. It was published in the United States by Dotdash Meredith. In February 2022, it was announced that InStyle would cease print publications and move to a digital-only f ...
'', the site stemmed from the desire to better serve
Gawker.com's female readers, who made up 70% of the site's readership at the time.
At the site's launch, the editorial staff included Holmes; editor Moe Tkacik, a former ''
Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' reporter; and associate editor Jennifer Gerson, a former assistant to ''
Elle
''Elle'' (stylized ''ELLE'') is a worldwide women's magazine of French origin that offers a mix of fashion and beauty content, together with culture, society and lifestyle. The title means "she" or "her" in French. ''Elle'' is considered the w ...
'' editor-in-chief
Roberta Myers
Roberta "Robbie" Myers (born November 10, 1964) is the longest-serving editor-in-chief and vice president of brand content of the US edition of the fashion media brand ''ELLE''. Myers led ELLE for nearly eighteen years, having been named editor-i ...
.
Gerson left the site in May 2008 to become the Women's Editor for the
Polo Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren Corporation is an American publicly traded fashion company that was founded in 1967 by American fashion designer Ralph Lauren. The company is headquartered in New York City, producing products ranging from the mid-range to the luxur ...
website; Tkacik departed in August 2008 to work at Gawker.com, after briefly accepting and then rescinding a job offer from ''
Radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...
''. Tkacik was subsequently laid off in a company-wide restructuring the following October. Holmes left the site in June 2010; Jessica Coen replaced her as editor-in-chief. Other current staffers include Madeleine Davies, Kelly Faircloth, Hillary Crosley, Kate Dries and Callie Beusman.
In December 2007, ''Jezebel'' reached 10 million monthly views. Gawker's owner
Nick Denton
Nicholas Guido Anthony Denton (born 24 August 1966) is a British Internet entrepreneur, journalist and blogger, the founder and former proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and was the managing editor of the New York-based ''Gawker' ...
pointed to ''Jezebel''s soaring popularity as one reason for a drop-off in traffic at the company's main site, Gawker.com, which fell from more than 11 million page views in October 2007 to about eight million in December.
Three years after its founding, ''Jezebel'' had surpassed the page traffic of its parent site.
According to the ''New York Times'',
feminist publications such as ''Jezebel'' have been particularly affected by financial turmoil within the news industry. ''Jezebel'' was one of six websites that was purchased by
Univision Communications in their acquisition of Gawker Media in August 2016. Univision sold the site in 2019 to a
private-equity firm
A private equity firm is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of startup or operating companies through a variety of loosely affiliated investment strategies including leve ...
, which combined various former Gawker publications under the name of
G/O Media
G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company that runs ''Gizmodo'', ''Kotaku'', ''Jalopnik'', '' Deadspin'', ''Lifehacker'', '' Jezebel'', '' The Root'', '' The A.V. Club'', ''The Takeout'', '' The Onion'', and ''The Inventory''.
Hist ...
.
Contents
Founding editor
Anna Holmes
Anna Holmes is an American writer and editor. In 2007, she founded the Gawker Media women-focused site Jezebel.
Early life and education
Holmes was born in California and studied journalism at New York University.
Career
Holmes was a staff writ ...
says she sought to create a counterpart to women's print magazines such as ''
Vogue'' and ''
Cosmopolitan''. According to Jordan Michael Smith, Holmes "hated
'Glamour''sworship of luxury, the lack of racial diversity, and the shallowness of women’s publications generally". The site was launched with the
tagline
In entertainment, a tagline (alternatively spelled tag line) is a short text which serves to clarify a thought for, or is designed with a form of, dramatic effect. Many tagline slogans are reiterated phrases associated with an individual, s ...
"Celebrity. Sex. Fashion. Without airbrushing."
Emma Goldberg of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' describes the site's hallmark as "feminist cultural criticism, with an edge".
A regular feature called "Photoshop of Horrors" documents
retouched photographs in fashion magazines. On its first day of operation, ''Jezebel'' offered a $10,000 reward for the best example of a magazine cover photo prior to being retouched for publication.
The winning entry, announced in July 2007, was a photo of country singer
Faith Hill
Audrey Faith McGraw (; born September 21, 1967), known professionally as Faith Hill, is an American singer and actress. She is one of the most successful country music artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide.
Hill' ...
from the cover of ''
Redbook''.
''Jezebel'' pointed out 11 different ways the photo had been altered, including radically distorting Hill's left arm.
A 2007 post by Tkacik says, "Jezebel is a blog for women that will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke. Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women's magazine we'd want to read." One of the site's guiding principles, according to Holmes, is to avoid saying "
misogynist
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced f ...
things about women's
weight
In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity.
Some standard textbooks define weight as a vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weight as a scalar qua ...
."
Editors-in-Chief
Media attention and influence
Jezebel's format has influenced other women-focused websites, including ''Slate'' magazine's ''
Double X'', ''
xoJane'', ''
The Hairpin'', and ''
The Frisky''.
Media coverage of the Faith Hill photo controversy included discussion and interviews on
NBC's ''Today'' show and in several other publications.
''Redbook'' editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison said that their retouching of Hill's photo was in line with industry standards and that ''Redbook'' was investigating how the unretouched image had been released.
A July 2008 article in the ''
Ottawa Citizen
The ''Ottawa Citizen'' is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
History
Established as ''The Bytown Packet'' in 1845 by William Harris, it was renamed the ''Citizen'' in 1851. The new ...
'' included ''Jezebel'' as one of several sites launched as part of the "online
estrogen
Estrogen or oestrogen is a category of sex hormone responsible for the development and regulation of the female reproductive system and secondary sex characteristics. There are three major endogenous estrogens that have estrogenic hormonal ac ...
revolution," referring to a
comScore finding that community-based women's websites were tied with political sites as the Internet's fastest-growing category. The article also cited ''
Ad Age
''Ad Age'' (known as ''Advertising Age'' until 2017) is a global media brand that publishes news, analysis, and data on marketing and media. Its namesake magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930. ''Ad Age'' appears in mul ...
''s research showing that women's Internet use is outpacing men's.
In 2010, ''Jezebel'' received widespread media coverage when it criticized ''
The Daily Show
''The Daily Show'' is an American late-night talk and satirical news television program. It airs each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central with release shortly after on Paramount+. ''The Daily Show'' draws its comedy and satire form from ...
'' for its treatment of women writers and correspondents.
As a result of this publicity, the site was parodied as "JoanOfSnark.com" on an episode of ''
30 Rock'', "
TGS Hates Women". Former ''Gawker'' staff writer
Emily Gould
Emily Gould (born October 13, 1981) is an American author, novelist and blogger who worked as an editor at ''Gawker''. She has written several short stories and novels and is the co-owner, with fellow writer Ruth Curry, of the independent e-boo ...
criticized the site in an essay for ''
Slate'', saying its pop-culture criticism and "righteously indignant rage" was simply "petty jealousy ... marketed as feminism".
Kashmir Hill of ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'' has been critical of the blog on two occasions. In 2012, ''Jezebel'' faced criticism when it published screen shots of a video depicting a rape and some users threatened to boycott the site. Later, in November 2012, ''Jezebel'' was criticized for publicizing the names of teenagers who posted racist tweets in response to
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
's re-election.
The website has been criticized at times for how it handles race issues, including its selection in July 2014 of a white woman as the new editor-in-chief over a black candidate who had been with the site since its founding.
In 2014, ''Jezebel'' writers accused the company Gawker Media of failing to address a campaign of harassment against its staff and readers, which included rape-themed images and threats of violence. In the post, which was titled "We Have a Rape Gif Problem and Gawker Media Won't Do Anything About It" the site's staff wrote that "an individual or individuals has been using anonymous, untraceable burner accounts to post gifs of violent pornography in the discussion section of stories on ''Jezebel''" for months.
In 2014, Caitlin Dewey of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' criticized ''Jezebel'' for its article about ''Vogue''s February issue, which depicted a retouched photograph of actress
Lena Dunham
Lena Dunham (, born May 13, 1986) is an American writer, director, actress, and producer. She is known as the creator, writer, and star of the HBO television series ''Girls (TV series), Girls'' (2012–2017), for which she received several Emmy ...
on its cover along with retouched images of her within. Dewey described it as a "feminist self-parody", stating that "
ditor-in-chief JessicaCoen doesn't just object to the type of unrealistic, unhealthy
Photoshopping
Photograph manipulation involves the transformation or alteration of a photograph using various methods and techniques to achieve desired results. Some photograph manipulations are considered to be skillful artwork, while others are consider ...
that warps our collective perception of what constitutes a normal size and shape, but to alterations of any kind", which she believes "doesn't really further that cause" of combating distorted
body image
Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, ps ...
in advertising.
Confusion has sometimes arisen over whether an article by Jezebel was satirical or not. In 2021, they posted an article asking why the
upcoming Mortal Kombat movie didn't feature notable female fighting character
Chun-Li
is a fictional character in Capcom's ''Street Fighter'' video game series. The first ever female playable character to appear in a fighting game to gain mainstream recognition, she first appeared in ''Street Fighter II: The World Warrior'' in 1 ...
. Confused fans quickly pointed out that Chun-Li was from the ''
Street Fighter
, commonly abbreviated as ''SF'' or スト (''Suto''), is a Japanese media franchise centered on a series of fighting video and arcade games developed and published by Capcom. The first game in the series was released in 1987, followed by six ...
'' franchise, which is entirely separate from the ''
Mortal Kombat
''Mortal Kombat'' is an American media franchise centered on a series of video games originally developed by Midway Games in 1992. The development of the first game was originally based on an idea that Ed Boon and John Tobias had of making a v ...
'' franchise. ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'' speculated that the article may have been satirizing fan reactions to
Johnny Cage
Johnny Cage is a fictional character in the ''Mortal Kombat'' fighting game franchise by Midway Games/ NetherRealm Studios. Introduced in the original 1992 game, he is an action movie star with an extensive martial arts background. The series d ...
not being in the trailer.
‘Mortal Kombat’ fans confused as Jezebel asks “Who forgot to invite Chun-Li?”
''NME''
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jezebel (website)
Gawker Media
American women's websites
Internet properties established in 2007
Feminist blogs
2007 establishments in the United States
Former Univision Communications subsidiaries