Slate Hiring To Launch A Jezebel Competitor
He says in interviews, Slate tells potential hires it wants to launch a rival to Gawker Media's women-focused site, Jezebel. According to its tagline, Jezebel covers "celebrity, sex fashion. Without airbrushing."
Jezebel is smart, funny and, according to its own numbers, very popular. No surprise, then, that Slate's not the only publisher building an imitation. Gawker's original editor Elizabeth Spiers -- who left Nick Denton's empire to found Dead Horse Media -- recently said she wanted to launch a women's site like Jezebel, but for older, less "urban" readers.
What will Slatebel look like? Our guy says to expect more of Slate's standard 600-word what-everyone-thinks-is-wrong articles and their close cousin what-everyone-thinks-is-right-but-not-for-the-reasons-everyone-thinks -- just in a new vertical.
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But if she wants to launch her own thing, that may not be in the cards.
For what it's worth, I don't think XX Factor will be like Jezebel, either. I get the impression that it'll be more about the politics/science/sociology of gender.
Slate approached me about TBM, but Joe is right, I wanted to do my own thing. (And they haven't approached me about XX, except to possibly write for it. )
I think a competing site/blog for the thinking woman would do very well against the Jezzie audience. A lot of women are pretty disenfranchised, and sometimes have opinions on politics and culture that don't align with their feelings on shoe shopping (despite the many pairs of Jimmy Choos in their closet).