The Mysterious Disappearance (And Reappearance) of Jezebel’s Archives
Over the course of the last few days, a huge number of articles at the feminist website Jezebel went offline, many of them investigative and analytical stories concerning subjects like abortion, sex, rape, pornography and pedophilia. Former Jezebel staffers—including me—began receiving messages from people familiar with the site’s current owners, the media company Paste, warning […]
Over the last few days, numerous articles were taken down from the feminist website Jezebel, covering topics such as abortion, sex, rape, pornography, and pedophilia, among others owned by media company Paste. Former employees, including the reporter, were advised to save their work from their own archives. According to sources, Paste's publisher, William Sagan, had been deleting "4,000 articles" from the site after a list was generated by an advertising and analytics company, claiming that the headlines were "not brand safe."
However, Sagan denied this, stating that his intention was to remove articles that were broken links or outdated, not to remove them due to their content. Many of the reporter's own stories, including an investigative series on a dubious lawsuit involving Donald Trump raping a 13-year-old, a story about three teenage rape victims in Oklahoma, and a story following a woman with an apparent "ghost" pregnancy, disappeared.
The number of removed articles is estimated to be higher than initially reported, with some reporting up to 1,000. Despite Sagan's claims, the articles were removed, and some have since returned with missing bylines, making it difficult to find and access the older stories.
Written by urgent.news from Mother Jones's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
