Subscribe to Jezebel

In a media environment where "brand safety" reigns supreme, we're introducing a subscription offering for our readers.

By Lauren Tousignant  |  February 12, 2024 | 10:50am
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Subscribe to Jezebel

We here at Jezebel are thrilled to be back, but as with any successful resurrection, we need to make some changes in order to keep surviving. Less than a month after we started publishing again, Google restricted our ad serving sitewide for weeks due to “sexual content” (which made it next to impossible for the site to make money). And it wasn’t just the stories that had “sex,” “crotch,” or “pussy” in the headline, it was a story about porn actors alleging abuse on set and this one about two dozen women who say they were coerced into porn. And, inexplicably, “Mila Kunis Is Right: Dudes, Stop Saying ‘We’re Pregnant’” was flagged as was Lindy West’s 2013 classic about rewatching Love Actually. Scrolling through all the “blacklisted” posts was both infuriating and confusing, even if we now have a priceless list of some of Jezebel’s best-ever stories.

We had the choice to self-censor or remove ads from hundreds of our “offending” articles in order to get ad-serving restored. We chose the latter. But in this media environment where “brand safety” (aka the term that makes it nearly impossible to make money) reigns supreme, we’re introducing a subscription offering for our readers.

We’d like to keep the bulk of our articles free for everyone but for $8 a month, subscribers will be able to comment on stories (this means no more greyed-out prison for new commenters, you’re welcome); join our invite-only Discord channels for live chats during election events, award shows, and TV premieres; receive special content like our weekly re-launched BarfBag roundup (like DirtBag but for politics); take part in the monthly Jezebel book club; submit questions for our weekly advice column; be the first to learn about future Jezebel events; and get unlimited access the entire catalog of Jezebel articles, as well as a few other subscriber-only content exclusives that will be rolled over the next few months. Plus, monthly members get a free Jezebel T-shirt, and if you go ahead and sign up for a year, you’ll receive an absolutely stunning Jezebel canvas tote bag.

For 17 years, Jezebel has published the stories that other outlets were too nervous, too prude, or too “brand safe” (before “brand safe” was even a thing) to touch. With this subscription, we hope we can keep publishing those stories for the next 70 years (or however many years we have left until the internet collapses in on itself). This way, we can do that without having to deal with the tech gods punishing us for daring to publish words like sex, crotch, or Love Actually.

 
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