This month's Dispatch #podcast explores the historic + current challenges in #digitalmedia and how emerging media models have sprung up as a result.

Gather writer Gita Jackson draws from her experience launching independent video game site @AftermathSiteUnofficial and reminisces with Molly Osberg about the tension between good content and #adrevenue while working at #GawkerMedia in its heyday.

Listen below and please consider sharing if it resonates with you!

https://gather.co/dispatch/the-independent-digital-media-present/

I'm still processing the news that #Jezebel is shutting down. Tbh, part of me is surprised it lasted this long, given the decline of text-based media on the internet and Peter Thiel's attempts to kill #GawkerMedia.

Yes, sometimes it was too snarky and superficial. It wasn't always as #feminist as it claimed, but it had solid coverage of #ReproductiveRights and sometimes it was good for a laugh. Plus, it defined my generation of #Millennial #women, for better or worse, in a way that I'm still trying to understand a decade plus later. I learned a lot from the Jezebel writers over the years, some good lessons and some not-so-good. I wrote a huge paper in graduate school about the cultural significance of #LadyBlogs, including Jezebel, #XOJane, #TheHairpin and other publications that are now long gone. Now I'm left wondering what the cultural significance of Jezebel's demise is. Online media and online spaces are so often ephemeral.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/nov/09/jezebel-news-shut-down-layoffs-go-media

Jezebel is being shutdown, after 16 years, by its parent company because "our business model … did not align with Jezebel’s" according to the CEO.

The Writers Guild of America-East condemned the decision, saying that a well run company would have moved away from an advertising based business model, instead of shuttering a "pillar of fearless journalism".

#news #Advertising #Media #GawkerMedia #Gawker #Jezebel

From Deadspins’s Ashes: The Story Of Defector

I think more publications like Deadspin would be a net positive. Back in the day only Gawker reliably called out startup bullshit.

‘The last good website’

Deadspin, the influential sports and culture blog that all but imploded a few years ago, made its name by savaging those it deemed “assh

https://www.masonpelt.com/from-deadspinss-ashes-the-story-of-defector/

#ColumbiaJournalismReview #DannyFunt #Deadspin #Defector #GawkerMedia

Gawker Media

https://peervideo.club/videos/watch/7313d721-2910-4f12-ae8f-01209454f588