Digest 11/08/2021

The quiet end of HelloGiggles, the Pete Davidson sex toy public relations cycle, and more.

HELLOGIGGLES HAS QUIETLY STOPPED PUBLISHING

A friend asked me if I could pass along an editor contact at HelloGiggles last week (I was a staff writer at the website for six months in 2016), and when I went looking for the masthead, I noticed something strange: the pop culture website hasn’t published anything since September 30. The last time it tweeted a story was October 1. Strangely, though, on Instagram the HelloGiggles account is chugging along as normal, posting art for old articles or articles from other properties owned by its parent company, Meredith.

A source with knowledge of the situation told me that HelloGiggles is no longer publishing, but that its Instagram is apparently still running. The only public acknowledgement that something at the website is awry is a September 24 tweet from former contributing news editor, Hedy Phillips. 

“Today was my last day as news editor at HelloGiggles as our incredible little team is no more,” she wrote.

https://twitter.com/JustHedyJ/status/1441526638391357441

HelloGiggles’ former site director, Hayley Mason, appears to have moved over to InStyle and Travel and Leisure. Other employees, like Raven Ishak and Pia Velasco, still list themselves as senior lifestyle editor and senior fashion and beauty editor, respectively, on Twitter, and did not respond to a request for comment. Meredith similarly did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

HelloGiggles launched in 2011, and was founded by Zooey Deschanel, Sophia Rivka Rossi, and Molly McAleer. Alongside other websites like Rookie, HelloGiggles established itself as an early pioneer of women’s digital media. Over the years, McAleer and Deschanel stepped back from the publication, but Rossi remained on board until 2019, during which time the site was bought by Time Inc, which was then bought by Meredith. On October 6, news broke that Meredith had been purchased by IAC/Interactive Corp for $2.7 billion — just a few days after HelloGiggles went dark. 

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FOR WHOM THE NEWSLETTER BOOMS

Last week, The Atlantic announced it was adding nine writers to its new newsletter platform, including Charlie Warzel, who is bringing his former Substack newsletter Galaxy Brain with him. It’s not just The Atlantic: The Information is still adding newsletters, and Punchbowl just got some Wall Street Journal coverage. After a little over a year, these were apparently three newsletter-related developments too many, because the media Twitter timeline erupted into discourse, mainly about how newsletters may not be the savior of media after all.

This was a moment a lot of people were likely anticipating since the newsletter boom began. Every rise in media has its fall, and while newsletters mercifully aren’t having pivot-to-video consequences, people are ready to talk about the downsides.

Some of the complaints are coming from Substackers themselves. In Casey Newton’s reflections on a year of Platformer, he mentions that while Substack told him to expect 10% of his total free subscriber base to convert to paid, the number was closer to 5%. At my Substack, Embedded, we were also told the 10% statistic, and found the real number for us was similarly lower. 

In Warzel’s Atlantic announcement, he also highlighted that one of his most popular and profitable posts to date was when he dabbled in internet beef with Glenn Greenwald, which should explain why a certain genre of writers do it so often. 

And then there’s this:

“Still confused how writing nonstop without constraints to please your paying audience got sold as the antidote to burnout,” Gimlet’s Reyhan Harmanci tweeted. 

https://twitter.com/harmancipants/status/1455604531664982031

Nothing should ever be heralded as the savior of media, because media itself has too many core issues that are hard not to replicate in these new spinoff formats. But for anyone who had to climb their way up the media ladder through Facebook clickbait and SEO, I’d say newsletters still provide freedom from both. There are days when I’m burned out writing Embedded, sure — but I’m also still my own boss. I remind myself that I’m the only one putting pressure on myself, and I’m also the one who can take it off. Also, not to brag, but this newsletter you’re reading right now was doing it before it was cool.

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THERE IS NOW A PETE DAVIDSON SEX TOY FOR HIS HORNY FANS

You probably received a PR email with this subject line last week. Or maybe it was the slightly different, but just as compelling, “THERE IS NOW A PETE DAVIDSON DILDO FOR HIS HORNY FANS.” Personally, I got the “sex toy” variation. In my Study Hall inbox. An outlet where I’ve never once written about sex or Pete Davidson.

This email was sent to everyone. Suddenly, my Twitter feed was full of writers screenshotting the subject line, or talking opaquely about the Dropbox of attached photos. If you didn’t get the email? You were probably tweeting about that, too.

https://twitter.com/klawls/status/1455972310591098885?s=20

https://twitter.com/loislane79/status/1455970716122157061?s=20

https://twitter.com/McHenryJD/status/1455972526199386121?s=20

https://twitter.com/alex_abads/status/1455972938138652678?s=20

https://twitter.com/eiffeltyler/status/1455972193330995210

https://twitter.com/erikawynn/status/1455973623714533384?s=20

https://twitter.com/AllisonPDavis/status/1455971826002186240

https://twitter.com/christress/status/1455967068000489477?s=20

I responded to the email to see if cam site Cam Soda (… you may not want to click that), the company responsible for the Pete Davidson sex toy (as well as the Cousin Greg sex toy), would tell me how many people they blasted out it out to, but didn’t receive a response. What a tease!

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COMINGS AND GOINGS

— Candice Frederick joined The Huffington Post as senior culture reporter. 

— Stassa Edwards is leaving Jezebel.

— Grace Wade is now an associate editor at Health Magazine.

— Isaac Lee is leaving The Ringer after over four years. 

— Emma Goldberg is joining the New York Times as a future of work reporter. 

— Gabrielle Bruney, Kylie Cheung, and Emily Leibert are joining Jezebel as staff writers. 

— Tristan Ahtone is joining Grist as editor at large with a focus on expanding Indigenous coverage.

— Julie Garcia is leaving the Houston Chronicle to join the communications department of a local hospital. 

— Katharine Schwab is joining BuzzFeed News as deputy tech editor. 

— Veronica de Souza is joining WNYC as director of digital news and audience. 

— Sarah Jacoby is leaving Self Magazine after over four years. 

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— Insider published an extensively reported piece about Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, which contained credible accusations from multiple young women that he had choked or otherwise become aggressive with during sex without consent. One woman said she was “screaming in pain” during sex with Portnoy, and another says she became suicidal and was hospitalized. In its aftermath, the piece prompted a larger discussion about what journalism should and shouldn’t be paywalled, but for what it’s worth, thanks to the piece, I’m a now long-overdue Insider subscriber.  

— Rolling Stone published a profile of NFT company Bored Ape (do not ask me to define it any more precisely because I cannot) that read suspiciously like sponcon. Oh!

— Roxane Gay’s tweet seems to have solved the Hearst Net-75 problem. Effectively immediately, she says, the company will now pay all writers Net 0, regardless of their tax status.

— The New York Times Company now boasts $1 billion in cash. Too bad none of that is apparently being used to pay writers’ kill fees after screwing them around for months. 

— The New York Mag union has released a series of testimonies from former staffers and unit members about why they left the company, almost all citing poor pay or lack of growth opportunities. In one case, a fact checker left for the same job at another publication, where they were paid $30,000 more.

— The Guardian has demanded a retraction from writer Eoin Higgins, who wrote two articles about transphobia in the Guardian’s newsroom on his Substack The Flashpoint. Higgins refused their request for a retraction, and published their entire email in full. 

— Ugh.