Jezebel restored more than 100 articles to its website following a Washington Post report Wednesday that found the women-focused website — a longtime staple of the feminist internet — had deleted the stories, many of which featured racy headlines.
The removals dismayed former staffers whose work disappeared from Jezebel’s website. Journalism ethics experts also told The Post that removing published articles was not standard practice for an outlet, especially when it did not publicly explain the decision to readers.
William Sagan, the publisher of Paste Magazine — which bought Jezebel in 2023 after it was shut down by a prior owner, G/O Media — had defended the site in a series of emails on Wednesday, saying that the articles were not deleted but temporarily unpublished to fix grammar or technical problems. He also said that no articles were targeted for removal based on the language in their headlines — including sexual or vulgar language.
By Thursday morning, hours after The Post’s report published, Jezebel had restored more than 100 articles that had previously been removed.
“We accelerated the article review and reposted the articles,” Sagan wrote in an email Thursday. When asked how many were restored, he said he believed all of the articles were now accessible.
The Post then identified to Sagan 18 articles that were still unavailable on the Jezebel site, which feature headlines including: “Fascinating Facts About Internet Sex,” “Nipple-Sucking Doctor Acquitted,” and “The Weird World Of Penis Lengthening.”
Additionally, some of the restored articles are now missing bylines that previously appeared there. Sagan did not immediately respond to emails asking about the still-unavailable articles or the missing bylines.
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