The Awl is shutting down

The Awl, the hard-to-classify site that published compelling personal essays, media commentary and much more, announced today that it will be shutting down at the end of January, along with its sister site The Hairpin.

The site was founded in 2009 by Gawker alums Choire Sicha and Alex Balk, and while you could definitely hear echoes of the Gawker style, it soon established itself as a home for a much wider range of writing.

The Awl moved to Medium in 2016, then back to WordPress last year, with editor Silvia Killingsworth writing, “The move to Medium was a cool experiment, in my opinion, but the year is up and personally I missed the ads.”

As for the impending shutdown, the official announcement begins:

It is with a mixture of disappointment and relief that we are announcing the cessation of editorial operations on The Awl at the end of this month. For nearly a decade we followed a dream of building a better Internet, and though we did not manage to do that every day we tried very hard and we hope you don’t blame us for how things ultimately turned out.

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