Spanfeller said they tried to sell Jezebel but failed to do so which resulted in the “difficult decision to suspend” Jezebel.
On Thursday, G/O Media announced that its female-focused website Jezebel will be shutting down and the company will lay off its editorial staff, according to Axios.
Jezebel staffers were informed of the shutdown and layoffs during a morning meeting on Wednesday.
CEO Jim Spanfeller said the termination of the website was decided as the company looks to restructure "a good number of our teams (eliminating some positions while adding some others), rethinking our editorial management structure and making a very painful change to our portfolio," according to Axios.
Spanfeller said they tried to sell Jezebel but failed to do so which resulted in the "difficult decision to suspend" Jezebel.
"Few decisions over the course of my career have been as excruciating, and I want to make clear this is in NO WAY a reflection on the Jezebel editorial team," Spanfeller said. "Unfortunately, our business model and the audiences we serve across our network did not align with Jezebel's."
Author Anna Holmes launched Jezebel in 2007 under the Gawker brand. It was then sold to Univision in 2016 after Gawker was shut down, and when G/O Media launched in 2019, it became a part of their portfolio, according to Daily Beast.
This comes as publishers who rely mostly on digital advertising have had to rethink their business strategies in order to take the ad market's volatility into account.
Earlier this year, G/O Media announced that it would be experimenting more with writing stories with generative artificial intelligence. This approach can be more economical, but it has resulted in erroneous tales and infuriated readers and workers, according to Axios.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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