Paste Media Acquires The AV Club

It feels surreal to even type these words, but Paste Media is now the official home of The AV Club, the legendary entertainment site founded out of the back pages of The Onion in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1993. We don’t plan on consolidating or changing the original vision of either site, as it takes its place alongside Jezebel and Splinter as sister publications to Paste Magazine, focused on great writing on the subjects we’re most passionate about.

I’ve been a fan of The AV Club since its print days, and we always admired it as both publications made the transition from print to online. Not much will change in the short-term as we transition the site from its previous owners’ platform to our own over the next few months. One of the first things we did, even before closing the deal to bring The AV Club into our fold was to ensure that comments got turned back on and that the history of commenting on the site was restored. One of the things that makes The AV Club great is its community of readers who keep the discussion going. In fact, we’re looking at bringing comments back to Paste Magazine, as well.

This announcement comes on the heels of the relaunch of Jezebel and last week’s relaunch of politics site Splinter. We’ve introduced a subscription model to both that comes with bonus stories, cool swag and more (one Jezebel subscriber did just say, “The tote bag I got for subbing to Jezebel is probably the single nicest tote I’ve ever gotten for subscribing to something” and the Splinter embroidered hat is gorgeous). We hope you’ll consider supporting one of those sites.

It’s our goal to make AV Club as good as it’s ever been and to keep growing and improving what we do at Paste, Jezebel and Splinter. We simply hope to be a place where arts, culture and politics writers can focus on writing great stories. You—the readers of Paste, many of whom have stuck with us now for decades and through all the ups and downs of the media industry—make that possible.

Sincerely,
Josh Jackson

Josh Jackson is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Paste Magazine and president of Paste Media. You can find him on Twitter at @joshjackson.