LGBTQ+ media site PinkNews is in the news again. First, the couple who run PinkNews were embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal. Then, two years later, there were suggestions that several five-star reviews on its Glassdoor profile had to be removed after being flagged as potentially AI-generated, which PinkNews denies. Now, fresh redundancies at the publication mean that its ever-diminishing workforce faces further shrinkage.

Reports suggest that following changes to Snapchat’s monetisation policy, bosses plan to cut between nine and 11 people from the 25-strong team. PinkNews will be closing its London office in November, with the remaining staff working remotely. This follows on from cuts earlier this year when four employees were let go.

Much of the current PinkNews content now reads like personal spite and vitriol against so-called “Terfs”, but there was a time when the publication produced actual journalism. The site once held influence with prime ministers, including David Cameron and Tony Blair, and helped bring about the introduction of gay-friendly legislation. It even published the odd scoop.

But look at the state of it now. In 2019, they published 42 hit pieces on JK Rowling in the week that she expressed support for Maya Forstater. It is also guilty of allowing copious typos to litter its content. A recent story about the supermodel referred to her as Kate Mass — one of my favourites. Grammatical mistakes abound, particularly since the recent redundancies. Take this classic sentence: “Amnesty International UK has removed a report which labelled JK Rowling’s sexual abuse crisis centre Beira’s Place…” There have also been hilarious image captions, such as “a beer peing poured into a glass.”

Editorial standards always suffer when a news organisation moves away from a reporter-led newsroom, and PinkNews is no different. When (if ever) did you last see a story prefaced by “We spent X weeks speaking to Y number of sources, and can now bring you this investigation on Z”? They label hundreds of stories as “exclusive”, but the vast majority are Z-list queer-adjacent interviews.

One of the last times PinkNews reported something nobody else knew — the very definition of a “scoop” — was when it published a story about me. It claimed that I was part of an “international network of powerful lesbians” and a cult leader responsible for trafficking vulnerable young lesbians to the UK and matching them with mail-order brides.

The fact that I never liked its coverage (even when it did actual news and the odd breaking story) didn’t mean it wasn’t journalism. Once upon a time, PinkNews even had the decency to email me for a right of reply when writing up its latest hatchet job. Mind you, the last time this happened, in 2019, I was so furious at the story angle (that I was lying about being attacked by a trans activist) that I retorted: “I despise your woman-hating, anti-lesbian rag, and would rather give Donald Trump a massage than speak to you.”

I can’t pretend to be impartial, but despite its strong social media presence, I do reckon this could be the end for this particular rag. Loyal visitors to the site will only keep returning if you give them something to come back to. And by the sound of it, there’ll be nothing left but pointless celebrity gossip.

---

Julie Bindel is an investigative journalist, author, and feminist campaigner. Her latest book is Lesbians: Where are we now? She also writes on Substack.

bindelj

---