AfterEllen shuts down citing financial reasons
by Joe Siegel
Popular blog AfterEllen has shut down after more than 10 years of operation. The site featured lesbian news and entertainment.
Editor in chief Trish Bendix announced on her personal website that the blog was shutting down on September 23.
Bendix, who won the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Media in 2015, said the decision to end the blog was due to financial reasons.
“Here are the facts: Evolve Media purchased AfterEllen from Viacom two years ago,” Bendix wrote. “They gave us two fiscal years to become their LGBT property and profit in that space, and they found we are not as profitable as moms and fashion. And, yes, ‘they’ are mainly white heterosexual men, which is important to note because not only is this the story for us, but for a lot of other properties.”
Bendix lamented the loss of the website, noting it had served as a haven for lesbian and bisexual women: “Somewhere, there’s a disconnect. AfterEllen is just one of the homes lesbian, bisexual and queer women will have lost in the last decade. It was a refuge, a community, a virtual church for so many. I’m not sure that some people outside of us can really ever understand that.”
AfterEllen is one of a number of LGBT-owned blogs that has closed down during the past few years.
Noted bloggers Pam Spaulding (formerly of Pam’s House Blend) and Jeremy Hooper (of Good As You) have shared their thoughts on LGBT issues on social media. Spaulding cited health and financial reasons for closing her popular site; Hooper, whose blog hasn’t been updated since February, adopted a baby with his husband and wanted to spend time with his family.
Bendix urged readers to support LGBT-owned media outlets and businesses, as well as LGBT artists.
“We need to support one another, because support from anywhere else is not guaranteed,” Bendix said. “Support queer women, women of color, trans women — give other deserving women your money, your eyeballs, your attention. Donate to their Kickstarters, visit their websites, advertise in their pages, buy their albums, go see their films in theaters, purchase their novels, frequent their businesses.”
IN THE NEWS
Volume 18
Issue 7
