Former AfterEllen editor-in-chief Trish Bendix was fired from her post Monday night after 10 years with the lesbian/queer-focused website. She spent the last two years in her current role managing content and editorial functions daily to keep the site relevant.
The website's owners say they will keep the site online and use freelancers at some point for new content.
"I always thought that when I left, it would be on the good hand," Bendix told Windy City Times. "I'm not so much sad for me, but for the community. It's a real low—a real loss—for the community to lose the site."
Bendix said she was affected so severely by the blow that she had to let her audience know what really happened. She wrote a blog post titled "Eulogy for the Living" on her Tumblr account explaining, in detail, what she felt occurred.
"Over the last 10 years, I've published a lot of very personal things on AfterEllen," she wrote. "I've written things people didn't agree with. I've written reviews of work created by peers that they didn't necessarily love. I've written about being married and then not. I've published interviews that were painful to get through and worse to relive during the transcribing and writing process. But nothing has been as difficult as what I've had to write today. After 14 years, AfterEllen as we know it will be effectively shutting down as of Friday."
Bendix next recounted the reasoning behind the controversial decision.
"Here are the facts: Evolve Media purchased AfterEllen from Viacom two years ago," she wrote. "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. 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."
She closed the post with, "I am sorry they would not let me post this on AfterEllen and hope that everyone who needs to find this explanation will."
Following Bendix's post, Evolve Media immediately published their retort, cut Bendix from her final two days of work, and eliminated her severance package, which had been just three weeks pay. In the blog post "False Rumor: We Are Not Shutting Down!" Emrah Kovacoglu, general manager of TotallyHer Media, a subsidiary of Evolve Media, wrote: "I'd like to set the record straight and let you know what is happening. Evolve Media acquired AfterEllen.com from Viacom in October 2014 and proceeded to up the investment in the site by creating new features, franchises, and content to grow the site and its advertiser base. Unfortunately, those efforts did not result in increased audience or enough advertiser support to justify continuing to invest at the same levels. Therefore, we decided we could not keep Trish Bendix on as the full time editor-in-chief."
Kovacoglu further wrote, "Rest assured that you will still be able to access the site, all of its content, and communicate with others through the forums. We will continue to work with our freelancers and contributors to cover the many topics and news that are important to the LGBT community."
Bendix concurred that the site would not have any regular staff.
"There may be periodic freelancing appearing, but it is not going to have anyone regularly editing or publishing posts," Bendix said. "I'm not going to be there anymore either so I'm not sure what that's going to look like. It's going to be a definite change."
The staff changes began in 2015.
"About a year ago I lost my staff editor, Dana Piccoli. When I started there were four of us full-time. That was when Viacom owned the site," she said. "When the first person left they said, 'Okay, three people can do this amount of work.' Then when that person left it was, 'Okay, two people can do this amount of work.'"
A year later, it was down to just one person running the ship—Bendix.
"It was definitely difficult. I spent a lot of nights and weekends waking up on east coast time and working all the way through to 5 p.m. Pacific time," she said. "With as much queer women media that's been happening, it's almost impossible to keep up—even with all of the work I've been doing and that the freelancers have done."
Bendix said looking back she could see what was to come.
"The bummer is that I didn't know, it was very much a surprise [that they were going to let me go], but looking back, it does appear to me that the fiscal year timing was [up]," she said.
She said "fashion, beauty and the space for mothers" was more profitable for Evolve Media and that the owners had decided to focus on those topics primarily.
According to their website, Evolve Media owns the following brands: ComingSoon.net, Wrestle Zone, The Fashion Spot, totalbeauty, SuperHeroHype, Hockey'sFuture, Momtastic, RealityTea, ShockTilYouDrop, Destructoid, Makesup & Beauty Blog, GameRevolution, NESN, Dogtime.com, WagBrag, PlayStationLifeStyle.net, What Culture, CatTime, ModernMom, ActionTrip, Cheat Code Central, beautyR!ot.com, EverydayFamily.com, Liveoutdoors, EDM.com, The Grio, SheroDog, Crave, and TotallyHer.
Former Expedia search engine exec Sarah Warn created AfterEllen in April 2002. She passed the editor-in-chief torch seven years later to Karmen Kregloe. Kregloe then passed it to Bendix.
Warn told Windy City Time of the news, "AfterEllen.com's readers are some of the most passionate and invested women on the internet. Thanks to all the readers, writers, vloggers, and other contributors to AfterEllen.com over the years who helped us create a truly unique place for queer women online. What's happening with AfterEllen.com now just underscores the need for minority groups to financially support content aimed at them, so please do! And don't use adblockers."
For her response, Kregloe tweeted, "End of an era. Thanks to all who kept this big ship afloat for yrs in a sea of misogyny. You made the world better!"
Former AfterEllen staff started a crowdfunding campaign to assist Bendix financially during her transition from AfterEllen to her next post. The goal is $5,000 with anything above that threshold being donated to lesbian website AutoStraddle and "other queer/lesbian media sites of the staff's choosing."
Bendix on her firing: trish-bendix.tumblr.com/post/150695653921/eulogy-for-the-living .
The crowdfunding campaign: www.thefayth.net/2016/09/feed-lesbians-support-trish-bendix-fund.html .
Evolve Media statement: www.afterellen.com/general-news/514543-false-rumor-not-shutting .
