(B)logging Off: Feministing Forever

After 15 incredible years, Feministing is shutting down. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you to the readers who joined us for this journey.

As digital media has become corporatized, many independent news sites and blogs have been forced to shutter. As the New York Times reports today, unfortunately, we find ourselves among these. While we became more financially sustainable over the years—in large part thanks to the support of readers like you!—we ultimately couldn’t build a long-term funding model in today’s media environment that would allow us to compensate our team fairly for their valuable work.

A farewell to Feministing and the heyday of feminist blogging

The New York Times covers the early feminist Internet.

In a sense, we are in good company. We are incredibly grateful to have shared the early Internet with so many pioneering bloggers and activists—women, people of color, trans folk—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 such as 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 achieve. For a decade and half, Feministing produced bold, uncompromising, anti-racist, 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 era. We covered a broad range of intersectional feminist issues—from campus sexual violence to transgender rights to reproductive justice to the fight against global colonialism. We turned an unapologetically feminist lens on everything from pop culture to politics to sex advice. We served as a gateway to the feminist movement for many young people—and as a source of hope and solidarity for feminists feeling isolated when the world seemed upside down.

Feministing remained completely independent over 15 years of publishing, resisting the pressure to tone down our message or avoid “controversial” topics to appeal more to corporate or venture capitalist dollars or merge with a less outspoken non-profit or other entity. Our team blogged and managed the site while holding down other, full-time jobs. It was truly a labor of love.

We are perhaps most proud of creating a pipeline of feminist thought leadership whose impact is profoundly felt today. Many Feministing alumni have gone on to 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 discussions. They’ve appeared and been cited in everything from CNN and MSNBC to the Clinton email dumps to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

In this spirit, we’re going to reunite the extended Feministing family for a farewell project—one last hurrah before we log off for good. Plans are also in the works to ensure that the site archives will remain available in some capacity. Make sure you’re signed up for our newsletter to get updates on all of that, including an invite to our (B)logging Off party in NYC!

We’ll see you in the streets.

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