Lena Dunham feminist newsletter Lenny Letter shutting down: report

Lena Dunham.
Jason
Merritt/Getty

• Lena Dunham’s feminist newsletter Lenny Letter and
  its website are shutting down, according to multiple
  reports.
• The newsletter had interviewed Hillary Clinton. It also
  ran articles by Jennifer Lawrence and Michelle Obama, as well
  as covering style, politics, and gender issues.
• The newsletter had grown to over 500,000 subscribers, but
  sources said it had struggled to secure ad revenue.

Lenny Letter, Lena Dunham’s feminist newsletter which ran
articles by Jennifer Lawrence and Michelle Obama, is reportedly
shutting down.

Dunham, who founded the newsletter in 2015, intended for it
“make the world better for women and the people who love
them,” according to the email the newsletter sent to new
subscribers.

But reports in
The New York Post and
Digiday said that the newsletter and the website that spun
out of it will shut down on Friday. They cited contributors to
the newsletter who told them about the reported closure.

Lenny Letter’s activity has notably slowed. The last email
newsletter was sent on Tuesday.

The site’s Twitter account also usually sends hourly
tweets, but at time of publication had not posted anything since
4 p.m. Thursday.

The newsletter grew to over 500,000 subscribers, according
to Digiday, but its growth on social media had slowed. 
Nearly half of subscribers were still opening the emails in July
2017, sources told the New York Post.

Michelle
Obama wrote for Lenny Letter in March 2016.
Lenny Letter

Sources said that the newsletter had always struggled to gain ad
support. It signed a deal with Condé Nast to handle ads for the
site in October. Condé Nast did not respond to requests for
comment from the Post and Digiday.

Suggestions of the closure began earlier this week when freelance
writers were notified by editors that they would receive “kill
fees” (compensation for work not being published), the Post
reported.

The newsletter is sent by email twice a week and covers
topics including feminism, style, politics, health.

“I think our ideal audience is anyone who considers themselves to
be a progressive feminist who wants to live an inspired life,”

Dunham told Business Insider in 2015.

“Our goal isn’t for you to read it at lunch. Our goal is for you
to have a relationship with it and talk to your friends about
it.”

As well as discussions of topics like birth
control, anxiety, gender issues, and activism, the
newsletter includes interviews with “powerful female figures who
get us excited.”

Lena
Dunham interviewed Hillary Clinton for Lenny Letter’s first issue
in September 2015.
Lenny
Letter

It published pieces with women like actress Gillian Jacobs,
New York Times best-selling novelist Jessica
Knoll, and feminist thinker and activist Gloria
Steinem.

Jennifer Lawrence wrote for Lenny about the Hollywood
gender pay gap, and the newsletter interviewed Hillary Clinton
when she was campaigning in the 2016 presidential
election.

Dunham, best known as the writer, star, and creator of HBO
show “Girls,” founded the newsletter with production partner
Jenni Konner. It is unclear whether the sites’ podcasts — “Women
of the Hour” and “Lenny Says” — will continue.