Wonkette

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Wonkette
Type of site
Politics, satire
Available inEnglish
OwnerWonkette Media
URLwonkette.com
CommercialYes
LaunchedJanuary 2004
Current statusActive

Wonkette is an American online magazine of topical and political gossip, established in 2004 by Gawker Media and founding editor Ana Marie Cox. The editor since 2012 is Rebecca Schoenkopf, formerly of OC Weekly. Wonkette covers U.S. politics in a satirical manner.

Launch and history

Wonkette was established in January 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Its founding editor was Ana Marie Cox, a former editor at suck.com.[1]

Cox rapidly established a large reading audience and media notice for the site. The blog gained further national media attention after Cox publicized the story of Jessica Cutler aka "Washingtonienne", a former Hill staffer who blogged about her affair with a member of former Senator Mike DeWine's staff.[2]

Cox announced her resignation as Wonkette's editor on January 5, 2006, in order to promote her book, Dog Days, and was succeeded by

Underneath Their Robes, a blog about the federal judiciary, and Alex Pareene, a young New York University student and Gawker intern/guest editor in New York who moved to D.C. for the Wonkette position. (In late 2007, Pareene moved to the flagship Gawker site and, in April 2010, to Salon.)[citation needed
]

In June 2006, Lat announced his decision to leave Wonkette. His slot was to be filled by guest editors until August 2006, when longtime political blogger Ken Layne joined as editor. Wonkette reached its largest pre-2008 audience during the 2006 midterm elections due to scandal coverage of Mark Foley and other incumbents involved in corruption, sex-abuse and bribery scandals.[citation needed]

After Pareene and Layne's departure in October 2007, a team of new editors including John Clarke, Jr. and Megan Carpentier was installed by Gawker management. Gawker publisher

Comics Curmudgeon.[citation needed
]

Wonkette teams covered both the Denver DNC and St. Paul RNC conventions. Newell and columnist Josh Fruhlinger covered Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington. As with many political websites, readership hit new records between the November 2008 election and January 2009 inauguration.[citation needed]

Past and current guest editors and contributors include

Boston Globe political blogger Garrett Quinn, cartoonist Benjamin Frisch, and Vanity Fair online writer Juli Weiner.[citation needed
]

In April 2011, Wonkette came under criticism after blogger Jack Stuef wrote a post that was interpreted as mocking

Trig Palin for his having Down syndrome. The post suggested that Trig was possibly the result of incest between Todd Palin and Bristol Palin. In response, at least 14 advertisers, including major companies such as Ford, Toyota, Verizon, Nordstrom, and Papa John's,[3] announced that they would exclude their network remnant advertising from Wonkette. Editor Ken Layne announced that Stuef was placed on probation and Stuef apologized for the post.[4][5][6]

The name of the site is a play on the slang word wonk, meaning a "zealous student of political policy",[7] adding the feminine ending to best describe founding editor Cox and as a play on the word "gazette."

Separation from Gawker Media

On April 14, 2008,

Consumers Union as part of the same divestiture effort.[citation needed
]

Wonkette Media also launched Wonkabout, a D.C. culture guide, which ran from February 12, 2009 until April 28, 2011, and was edited by Arielle Fleisher.[9][10]

In February, 2017, Wonkette went ad-free,[11] and it is now supported by reader donations.

Move to Substack

In July 2023, Schoenkopf moved Wonkette to Substack, retaining its existing URL. She projected that the move would lower the site's hosting costs and possibly attract new readers.[12]

Reception

The

Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me and CNN.[citation needed
]

Alex Nichols, writing in The Outline in 2017, described Wonkette, saying, "This is why I love Wonkette, the gossip blog that refuses to die. Wonkette is Bush-era liberalism frozen in amber, motionless and immortal, forced to passively observe a changing world until the end of time. Why does it still exist? Hard to say. But as long as it is here, we must celebrate its inanity." He wrote, "The site isn't an indictment of centrists, the Democratic Party, or neoliberalism. It doesn't prove a point about anything, and it isn't an example of any trend or political tendency, which makes it all the more baffling ... Wonkette simply exists, and it might outlast us all."[13]

References

  1. ^ Bosman, Julie (April 18, 2004). "First With the Scoop, if Not the Truth". The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2008.
  2. ^ Rosen, Jeffrey (December 19, 2004). "Your Blog or Mine?". New York Times. Retrieved July 29, 2008.
  3. ^ "Big Journalism Articles - Breitbart".
  4. ^ Sadowski, Jathan (April 20, 2011). "Boycotting Wonkette [UPDATE: Probation]". Slate.com. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  5. ^ Dickson, Caitlin. "Derek Hunter Attempts to Defund Wonkette by Boycott". NationalJournal.com. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  6. ^ Hagey, Keach (April 21, 2011). "Advertisers boycott Wonkette over Trig Palin post - On Media". Politico.Com. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  7. ^ Safire, William (July 26, 1992). "ON LANGUAGE; The 'Bizarre' Bazaar" – via NYTimes.com.
  8. ^ Ken Layne (April 14, 2008). "Yes We Can: Wonkette Goes Solo". Wonkette.com. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  9. ^ "Introducing Wonkabout"
  10. ^ Fleisher, Arielle (April 28, 2011). "Tattooed Pig Urges Wonkabout To Leave DC (Goodbye Forever!)".
  11. ^ Rebecca Schoenkopf (February 9, 2017). "Wonkette To Ad Networks: Fuck Off And Die". Wonkette.com. Retrieved December 19, 2018.
  12. ^ Rebecca Schoenkopf (July 6, 2023). "A Wonkette Change ... Is Gonna Come". Wonkette.com. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
  13. ^ Nichols, Alex (November 10, 2017). "The Blog Nobody Needs". The Outline. Retrieved November 16, 2017.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wonkette&oldid=1205940934"