Over the course of the last few days, a huge number of articles at the feminist website Jezebel went offline, many of them investigative and analytical stories concerning subjects like abortion, sex, rape, pornography and pedophilia.
asserted
many → go → abortion
Former Jezebel staffers—including me—began receiving messages from people familiar with the site’s current owners, the media company Paste, warning us to check our own archives and try to preserve what we could of our work.
uncertain
we → include → work
According to people familiar with the current workings of the company, William Sagan, the company’s publisher, had been on a “mass deletion spree” after an advertising and analytics company generated a list of 4,000 articles on the site whose headlines were “not brand safe,” according to a text message I viewed.
uncertain
I → accord → message
(In a brief email exchange, Sagan appeared to dispute this version of events, but his comment was not clearly written and it was impossible for me to figure out definitively what he was trying to say.
asserted
he → appear → what
He did not answer several followup emails I sent trying to clarify his statement.
asserted
I → answer → statement
)
I worked at Jezebel and its then–parent companies Gawker Media, Gizmodo Media Group, and G/O Media, for five rather turbulent years, from 2014 to 2019.
asserted
I → work → 2019
(The number of name changes alone may signal to the reader just how turbulent it was.)
uncertain
it → signal → reader
When I went to look for various stories of mine on Wednesday, they were, indeed, gone.
asserted
they → go → Wednesday
An investigative series I wrote about a dubious lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of raping a 13-year-old: all gone.
asserted
all → write → Trump
A story about three teenage rape victims in Oklahoma who were bullied out of school after identifying their attacker: gone.
asserted
who → bully → attacker
A story I’d written following a woman with an apparent delusional or “ghost” pregnancy, where I’d gotten access to the rarely-seen courtroom inside Bellevue Hospital: gone.
asserted
I → write → Hospital
My former colleague Stassa Edwards discovered that much of what she’d written about the infamously lenient judgment against Stanford swimmer and convicted rapist Brock Turner had disappeared.
asserted
she → discover → Turner
An interview that writer Jia Tolentino did with a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks after she found out her baby would never survive outside the womb: gone.
asserted
baby → do → womb
My former colleague Clover Hope, an industry-leading arts and culture writer, found just one of her own articles still online, after many years at the company.
asserted
colleague → lead → company
Nor did many of my own stories that had disappeared have anything to do with topics like abortion or rape; for instance, a series of stories I wrote about ridiculous Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka were also gone, including one about him reportedly taking a bag with a gun inside it through a TSA checkpoint.
uncertain
him → disappear → checkpoint
(Gorka said he’d picked up his a bag containing his wife’s unloaded pistol by mistake.)
asserted
he → say → mistake
My former colleague Joanna Rothkopf even found that one of her most lighthearted (and viral) pieces had disappeared, about her experience wearing an enormous elecric green dinosaur-esque tail for a week.
asserted
one → find → week
(I still cannot find that piece, but thankfully, the video still lives on YouTube.)
asserted
video → find → YouTube
The Washington Post reported that over 100 articles at Jezebel were removed, but staffers currently working at Jezebel and Splinter, another former Gizmodo Media site now owned by Paste, estimated the true number to be much higher. Splinter editor-in-chief Jacob Weindling told me in an exchange on Bluesky that he thought at least 1,000 Jezebel and Splinter articles had been removed; and a thorough spreadsheet of removed posts began circulating among current and former Jezebel and Splinter reporters.
asserted
spreadsheet → report → reporters
(In all, about 49 of my own stories were included on that list.)
asserted
49 → include → list
The writer Eoin Higgins wrote on Bluesky that he’d linked to a still-live Jezebel article to explain something in a piece he was writing; by the time an editor reached the piece, the article he’d referred to was gone.
asserted
he → write → piece
When reached for comment on Wednesday, Sagan, the Paste publisher, told me, “The contention in your second paragraph is inaccurate.”
asserted
contention → reach → paragraph
In the second paragraph of my email to him I had written, “I’m told that you were the person who was in charge of this decision, which was undertaken to make Jezebel more ‘brand safe.’”
asserted
Jezebel → write → decision
In other words, Sagan appeared to dispute either that he’d been the person to remove the stories, or else that the decision to remove them had been made with “brand safety” in mind.
asserted
decision → appear → mind
He was slightly clearer with the Post, writing that “while “no article has ever been deleted from Jezebel,” the site will “occasionally move old articles into draft status for a multitude of reasons” including those that have broken links or outdated third-party content, or “to fix significant content or grammar problems or for other reasons.”
asserted
that → write → reasons
Former Jezebel journalist Kylie Cheung also contacted Paste for comment, wondering why articles on the site had been apparently removed and what standards at the company had changed to necessitate those removals.
asserted
standards → contact → removals
In emails that Cheung shared with me, Sagan told her that her statement that articles had been removed from Jezebel was “inaccurate and defamatory,” and that articles using the word “abortion” in the headline were still live on the site, as well as “thousands of other articles which use abortion in the text of the article.”
asserted
which → share → article
“Your derogatory comments regarding Jezebel are without foundation,” Sagan wrote.
asserted
Sagan → regard → foundation
(Cheung had not, as far as I have seen, actually made derogatory or “defamatory” claims about Jezebel.)
uncertain
I → see → Jezebel
“The editorial policy of Jezebel has not changed and will not change.
asserted
policy → change → Jezebel
No one tells Jezebel editors what stories to write and publish.
asserted
one → tell → stories
You owe Jezebel an apology.
asserted
You → owe → apology
And then there was another twist: on Thursday morning, some of the articles that had disappeared came back online—missing not just their accompanying art, but their bylines.
asserted
that → be → art
(In another brief email exchange, Sagan asked me to identify stories missing their bylines, but did not respond to other questions.)
asserted
Sagan → ask → questions
All of my stories published before 2018—most of my stories, that is—are now missing my byline, making them harder to search for and impacting how accessible my older work is to find.
asserted
work → publish → byline
Other stories by former Jezebel authors are still inaccessible, although it is difficult to tell how many in total remain offline.
asserted
many → tell → total
A few of my own pieces are also still offline, with 404 “Page not found” in their place.
asserted
Page → find → place
“We accelerated the article review and reposted the articles,” Sagan told The Washington Post, although he did not specify what the review entailed or who undertook it.
asserted
who → accelerate → it
All of this comes at the end of a long bout of difficulties for Jezebel, which is no longer as robust an outlet as it was when I worked there.
asserted
I → come → Jezebel
The site and Splinter were sold to Paste by G/O Media in November 2023, after briefly shutting down earlier that month.
asserted
site → sell → November
…and 17 more, not listed.
The Aporia
