Last week it was announced that The Outline was acquired by Bustle Digital Group, the parent organization of sites like Bustle, Elite Daily, and New Gawker. This is very good news if you like or even like to hate The Outline, because it means The Outline will continue to exist.
Many people have asked me if The Outline will change what it is doing now that it is owned by Bustle Digital Group. The short answer to this question is… no!!! The site will have the same staff, cover the same topics, and feature the same writers. The site will also look the same. The squiggly lines are not going anywhere and we will never apologize for them. The extended answer to this question is actually yes, we might change a little in that we will be able to expand our staff, pay more people to write more stories for us, and reinvest in longform and audio projects, all of which we are very excited about.
The Outline was founded in 2016 as a reprieve from formulaic news sites, a place where one could read a smart essay, idiosyncratic investigation, or simply take a break from the churn of the current popular news cycle. Mostly, our mission was to publish only things we really wanted to publish, not to play the Sisyphean game of writing content around trending topics or Google keywords. This mandate has allowed us, in my opinion, to be very weird, interesting, thoughtful, and most importantly, distinctly ourselves. How so, you ask? Let’s reflect on some things we have examined:
So I hope you’ll stay with us on this strange media journey, and we look forward to remaining the same, but maybe even better. And if you have any questions, complaints, or compliments, I’m always available at leah@theoutline.com.
Thank you for reading,
Leah
