Splinter Is Back!

In November, Paste Magazine bought Jezebel and Splinter from G/O Media, and after resurrecting Jezebel, Paste has now brought Splinter back to life. Jacob Weindling (me, hi!) is the Splinter Editor-in-Chief and the excellent Dave Levitan, who has written for Splinter and Gizmodo in the past (as well as at many, many other well-known outlets), will be Splinter’s Deputy Editor.

I was a Paste politics staff writer and editor for the business and media sections at the same time that Splinter was pumping out bangers during the Trump administration, and if you read any of our articles at Paste (we know Bernie did!), you know we have some lefty bona fides. Not Splinter-level bona fides, but enough to at least get on a presidential candidate’s radar. I also once got CNN to admit on the record that they screwed up, so you can rest easy knowing that the stewards of new Splinter have been around the block once or twice before.

Our goal with Splinter is to honor the efforts of those who came before us and highlight voices who can bring smart and informed perspectives about politics and the broader world of subjects that word implies. If you want to learn more about what new Splinter is all about, read it when we launch tomorrow! If you want to write for us, pitch me at Jacob at Splinter dot com!

We are not trying to reinvent the wheel here. The Splinter mission has not changed. We are lefties who see the world as the same degree of fucked as the folks who came before us do, and we want to honor the Gawker ethos all of OG Splinter embodied.

Digital media is being choked to death by Google and Facebook’s ad monopoly, and outlets like Splinter and Jezebel and so many others have paid the price for the insatiable greed of our Silicon Valley overlords and our feckless politicians and institutions who could do something to help the industry but refuse to enforce anti-trust laws already on the books.

Luckily, Jezebel and Splinter fell into the hands of a magazine that has existed since 2002. Paste may not be the biggest name in media, but there aren’t many companies that can say they’ve navigated the entire digital era and are still breathing, let alone thriving. Paste has a lot of unique advantages that make it an ideal owner for these essential websites, and growth here is about sustainability so we can build a lifeboat for writers who speak truth to power in this digital media hellscape we all call a career. We want to be a champion for this kind of unvarnished and unabashed style that changed journalism for the better, but is becoming scarcer in a world increasingly dominated by a handful of major outlets. It’s more important than ever to support independent media.

So go subscribe to the OG Splinter folks over at Discourse Blog. Subscribe to the Deadspin folks over at Defector. Subscribe to the Kotaku folks at Aftermath. Subscribe to Jezebel. Subscribe to Splinter. The vast majority of content on Jezebel and Splinter will still be free to read, but because Google decides what words we can and cannot make money off of (spoiler: not that many!), we’re offering a subscription tier that gives you access to some subscriber-only content, access to our Discord-only channels for live chats during big events, some Splinter swag and any other additional ideas we can come up with along the way to reward those who support us the most. Additionally, Paste is putting its money where its mouth is in its commitment to Splinter‘s collectivist values and sharing a significant portion of this subscription revenue with its staff.

Splinter explicitly said it was not Gawker—nothing else could be—but it did harness that spirit of speaking truth to power that changed the media industry forever. Calling a spade a spade is a radical act now where the Truth™ is administered by only a few Very Serious outlets whose interests generally align with those in power, and we aim to continue the proud rabble-rousing tradition of our predecessors.