Bringing Back The Feminist Blog

A powerhouse new collective of feminist writers and artists will launch The Flytrap Media, starting with a Kickstarter running throughout October before debuting a weekly newsletter on November 5, 2024. (Yes, Election Day. On purpose.) 

The Flytrap Media is a worker-owned, intersectional, and expansive feminist media group that thinks beyond clicks and hashtag-engagement. Our flagship newsletter, The Flytrap, will feature fresh, surprising, and sometimes challenging critiques, analyses, and reporting on culture, politics, and current events.

• “We miss the golden age of feminist blogging, so we’re bringing that energy back,” says Flytrap co-founder Andrea Grimes. “It’s been a bummer to see so many great feminist and social justice-minded publications fall victim to the venture capitalist media economy in recent years. We’ve created a lean, leaderful collective rooted in accountability to ourselves and to our readers, rather than the algorithm.”

• “It’s been kinda painful to watch the feminist sites I devoured not even 10 years ago just disappear into the ether,” says Aria Velasquez, a Flytrap co-founder. “I’m excited to be part of this resurgence and part of a larger wave of worker-owned media companies. I hope there’s more where this came from.”

• “It’s hardly news that it’s been getting more and more difficult to make it as a writer,” says Chrissy Stroop, another co-founder. “The Flytrap gives the professional writers contributing to it the chance to take back our power in the face of the mediapocalypse and internet enshittification, pursuing our careers in a way that aligns with our values–values we know a large reading public shares, no matter how much Elon Musk and his ilk try to suppress their expression.”

• “I decided to join The Flytrap because I miss the feminist blog so badly – both as a reader and as a writer,” says Nicole Froio, a Flytrap co-founder. “I also think it's an opportunity to build something with other folks who are values-aligned with feminism that could be the antidote to the current tech bro-dominated media landscape. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to make something new.”

• “At a pivotal moment in history, talented journalists are being forced to leave the field as it’s overrun by big tech and big capital,” says Flytrap co-founder s.e. smith. “The Flytrap is creating an explicitly feminist space for where people can find sharp, thoughtful reads and community in a place that also brings a little joy back to the internet.”

The Flytrap is staffed by writers and artists who bring a dazzling array of identities and experiences — both professional and personal — to their mission: Bringing principled and diverse cultural criticism from a feminist perspective back to the internet. 

Founders Katelyn Burns, Evette Dionne, Nicole Froio, Christine Grimaldi, Andrea Grimes, s.e. smith, Chrissy Stroop, Rommy Torrico, Tina Vásquez, and Aria Velasquez have been published in outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Rolling Stone, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, the New York Review of Books, Politico Magazine, the Nation, In These Times, and Bitch Magazine, among dozens of other publications. Torrico’s work has been exhibited in the Getty, the Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress. 

Members of the collective have been recognized with National Magazine Awards, inclusion in The Best American Series, the Journalism Collaboration of the Year Award from the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Media Consortium’s Impact Award, the Eos Award, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) Media Excellence Award, the Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity Award, and fellowships at the McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism, Type Investigations’ Ida B. Wells Southern Fellows, the VONA/Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, and the Omidyar Network.

If you’re interested in covering The Flytrap, reach us at [email protected]