![]() I think I was a freshman in college when the site launched. SUMMERS: I mean, in many ways, I am a person who really grew up with Jezebel. I was particularly irritated by the ways in which we collectively were teaching young women who they were and how to be. The magazines didn't reflect the full range of interests of young women. And I had found those women's magazines to be incredibly one-note, heteronormative. I felt very strongly that it was something that we had to lean into, especially because of my experience working at women's magazines in the years preceding the creation of Jezebel. And by political, I mean not just around, let's say, electoral politics, but gender politics and around racial politics. What I don't think Nick realized was the way in which we were going to be explicitly political. He wanted a women's website that would, you know, have a scrappy attitude. HOLMES: Well, there was my vision, and then there was the vision of the company that hired me's (ph) owner, Nick Denton. What was your vision for what ultimately became Jezebel? At that point, there was really nothing else like it in the media landscape. SUMMERS: I want to go back to those early days when you were first hired and creating this blog. So it's not that it didn't have an effect on the larger culture, it's just that perhaps it was time for it to. A lot of the alumni of the site now work at those publications. A lot of the subjects and the tone embedded themselves into the DNA of more traditional or mainstream publications. But as one person put it, perhaps Jezebel was a victim of its own success. I'm sad about the people who lost their jobs - there was a fair number of them. HOLMES: So 16 years feels like a good run. In fact, when I started the site, I wasn't sure whether it would be successful at all. HOLMES: You know, I felt a little shocked at first, but I didn't feel really horrible about it because I kept looking at it through the lens of other media. SUMMERS: Let me just start by asking, what has the last week been like for you after the news that Jezebel shut down? Anna Holmes created the website back in 2007 and joins me now. Jezebel was a pioneer, publishing pieces about issues of gender and power before they were on the forefront of the digital media landscape. ![]() Its parent company, GeoMedia, said it was restructuring to cope with economic headwinds and a difficult digital advertising environment. And after 16 years, Jezebel shut down last week. Sex, celebrity, politics with teeth - that was how the feminist website Jezebel defined itself. ![]()
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