Evolve Media, which owns lesbian
website AfterEllen, has denied that the site is closing on Friday
after 14 yeas.
News of the “effective closure”
came in a blog post written by Editor-in-Chief Trish Bendix.
“After 14 years, AfterEllen as we
know it will be effectively shutting down as of Friday,” Bendix
wrote on her personal tumblr, where she also announced her
departure.
Evolve Media, Bendix said, “has
decided to keep the site and its archives alive for now, with a
promise of periodically publishing freelance pieces in the future.”
Bendix said that Evolve Media gave the
site two years to become profitable after it purchased the property
from Viacom.
“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,” she wrote. “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 – large-scale media outlets, lesbian bars
out-priced by neighborhoods they helped establish, housing in queer
meccas like Portland that is being turned into condos and AirBNBs.”
In
an email to The
Advocate, Evolve Media President Brian Fitzgeral denied that
the site was shuttering.
“The site is not shutting down,” he
wrote. “[Bendix's] absence is not 'effectively shutting down.'”
Evolve Media did say that the site's
performance did not “justify continuing to invest at the same
levels” as before.
Bendix added in her post that she was
“overcome with loss” over the loss of AfterEllen as it was known.
“[B]ut not jut for me, for my
community. For every single woman who has ever come up to me,
tweeted us, sent us an email or a Facebook message or written a blog
post about how much AfterEllen has meant to them at some point in
their life, I am grieving this with you. We had so much ahead of us
– more than ever before – and I'm sorry there won't be an
opportunity for us to do that work together.”