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Bitch Media, the scrappy, independent zine that grew into a multimedia nonprofit based in Portland, will cease all operations this year.
The organization announced the news April 12 on its website and social media platforms, adding that it would officially go dark in June.
“Recent years have brought a multitude of challenges to our organization,” the message stated, “and despite incredible effort, we have concluded that we are unable to sustainably continue creating the quality content that our readers and supporters expect.”
The post did not specify what those challenges were, though the pandemic likely played a role as it has with virtually all media outlets.
Bitch Media began as an ambitious zine in 1996, conceived by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler, who were fed up with reductive, sexist mainstream media portrayals of women and wanted an outlet to respond.
According to Bitch Media’s website, the two recruited high school friend and Mother Jones employee Benjamin Shaykin to lay out the publication on his Mac computer and then they printed it at a copy shop in Berkeley, Calif, distributing the resulting 300 copies out of Jervis’ station wagon. The first issue immediately caught the eye of the Chicago Tribune, which called Bitch a “breath of journalistic fresh air.”
The zine grew and garnered more attention from other reputable publications, allowing Jervis and Zeisler to launch a website and rent office space in San Francisco’s Mission District.
In 2001, the founders left their day jobs to work on Bitch full time. They brought on additional staffers in the years that followed, moved to Oakland and then eventually Portland in 2007, where operations have been based ever since.
Nine years ago, the organization expanded yet again by spinning off Bitch on Campus, a program designed to teach media literacy in the college classroom in order to encourage thoughtful analysis and evaluation instead of blind consumption. The outlet also offered fellowships to emerging writers.
Despite all of those transitions, the goal of the publication remained the same: provide a feminist response to pop culture through insightful, entertaining critique.
Current subscribers have been notified about the upcoming cancellations, and refunds are being processed. BitchMedia.org will remain active for the foreseeable future as an archive.
“We feel incredibly lucky to have turned what was once a stapled-together zine into a media organization that published a talented and diverse slate of new voices and inspired an incredible amount of loyalty from people who became not just readers but stakeholders in our work,” the website message continued. “And we are proud to leave a quarter-century legacy as a fresh, revitalizing voice in both contemporary feminism and independent publishing. We will miss all those who accompanied us on this journey. Thank you for everything.”