Gawker Media Launches Jezebel

Posted on May 23, 2007

Gawker Media has launched a new blog called Jezebel. In the introductory post the blog is introduced as a blog that Gawker claims will dispel the "great lies of women's magazines."

To put it simply, Jezebel is a blog for women that will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke. Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women's magazine we'd want to read, a magazine that would never actually see glossy paper because big-name advertisers and the publishers who kowtow to them don't much like it when you point out the vulgarity of a $2000 handbag. Women deserve some of the blame here: if men ever bought $2000 handbags, Esquire and GQ might be as bad -- and profitable -- as Glamour and Vogue.

The post goes on to list five of the biggest lies Jezebel's editors think can be found in women's magazines such as the must-have lie and the celebrity-profile lie. The Wikipedia entry for Jezebel says that in popular culture Jezebel is a name that "has come down through the centuries to be used as a general name for all wicked women." Jezebel is also the name of an Atlanta luxury magazine that currently features singer Christina Aguilera on the cover.

Gawker publisher Nick Denton hinted Gawker Media would be launching a women's title several months ago in a Valleywag post that was critical of Glam Media's traffic numbers. He wrote, "Disclosure: Gawker Media may at some point launch a women's title, in which case we would compete with Glam."