(B) sign off: Feministing Forever – News Block

After 15 incredible years, Feministing is closing down. From the bottom of our hearts, thanks to the readers who joined us on this journey.

As digital media has become corporatized, many independent news sites and blogs have been forced to shut down. As the New York Times Today’s reports, unfortunately, we find ourselves among them. While we have become more financially sustainable over the years, largely thanks to the support of readers like you!, we were ultimately unable to build a long-term funding model in today’s media environment that would allow us to offset our team fairly for their valuable work

In a sense, we are in good company. We are incredibly grateful to have shared the early days of the internet with so many pioneering bloggers and activists (women, people of color, trans people) who paved the way for today’s digital media landscape. We are honored to be mentioned in the same breath as legendary feminist and progressive sites like Jezebel, Feministe, Racialicious, Tiger Beatdown, Crunk Feminist Collective, Pandagon, Black Girl Dangerous, Angry Black Bitch, The Hairpin, The Toast, Bitch Media, Raw Story, Jacobin, Truthout, Talking Points Memo and many more.

While we are sad that Feministing will no longer exist as a blog, we are proud of what we have been able to accomplish. For a decade and a half, Feministing produced bold, uncompromising, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist feminist analysis, fought for real-world change, and helped build an engaged community of young feminists who fundamentally changed the media landscape and reinvigorated the feminist movement.

At its peak, Feministing had 1.2 million unique monthly visitors, making it one of the most widely read feminist publications of its day. We cover a wide range of intersectional feminist issues, from campus sexual violence to transgender rights, reproductive justice, and the fight against global colonialism. We apply an unapologetically feminist lens to everything from pop culture to politics to sex advice. We serve as a gateway to the feminist movement for many young women, and as a source of hope and solidarity for feminists who feel isolated when the world seems to be turned upside down.

Feministing remained completely independent for 15 years of publication, resisting pressure to tone down our message or avoid “controversial” topics in order to attract more corporate or venture capital dollars or merge with a lesser nonprofit or other entity. open. Our team wrote and managed the site while doing other full-time jobs. It was truly a labor of love.

Perhaps we are most proud to have created a feminist thought leadership channel whose impact is deeply felt today. Many Feministing alumni have gone on to have influential careers. Today, they are best-selling authors, columnists, strategists, and political analysts. They are doing the quiet, behind-the-scenes work of grassroots organizing. They run major publications, host award-winning podcasts, and lead national policy debates. They have appeared and been quoted on everything from CNN and MSNBC to Clinton email dumps to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

In this spirit, we’re bringing the extended Feminist family together for a farewell project: one last hurray before finally pulling the plug. Plans are also in the works to ensure that the site’s files remain available in some way. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter for updates on all that, including an invite to our (B)logging Off party in New York!

We’ll see you on the streets.