It launched in 2014 with ambitions to be more than just a “BuzzFeed” for young women. Now, the UK-based digital publication The Debrief is shutting down. Parent company Bauer Media, a European media group that owns hundreds of other publications worldwide, is folding some of The Debrief’s editorial staff into the newsroom of the company’s women’s magazine Grazia.

“We are sad to announce that it has been proposed that The Debrief, our much-loved brand that connected with so many young women will cease publication,” read the announcement on The Debrief’s website on Tuesday. “Despite achieving so much in the last four years and winning a slew of awards, sadly we cannot see a viable future for this brand as it stands.”

I reached out to The Debrief and will update this post with any details about the decision to end its operation as a standalone site. I’m not sure if a plummet in the publication’s engagement rates on Facebook ultimately had a hand in the decision but here’s its CrowdTangle data from the past two years:

The site, which published stories ranging shorter news and lifestyle pieces to hefty investigations, had been a springboard for many women writers (see just this small selection of in-memoriams on Twitter). It had very recently gotten into podcasting.

genuinely sorry to see The Debrief go – their series on hormonal contraception is excellent https://t.co/DojMXor6tz

— Elena Cresci (@elenacresci) April 24, 2018

A press release on Bauer Media’s own site spun the closure differently:

Bauer Media has today announced plans to invest in the Grazia digital editorial team in order to drive growth and better serve its audience. New team members will be added to the Grazia online team to grow traffic and engagement across the site. As a result of the decision to increase focus and resource on Grazia, we are proposing to cease publication of The Debrief.

Grazia and The Debrief’s audiences, more than ever, are unified by their outlook and shared interests. Both audiences will now be served by Grazia online, whose breadth, unique voice, fashion authority and coverage of politics and news has a broad appeal amongst women in a rapidly changing social landscape.

The Debrief had been Bauer Media’s attempt to capture a younger audience; it launched at a time when several magazine publishers were testing completely new sites as a way to gain a younger generation of readers, rather than using their existing brands.

“With its unapologetically frank, inclusive and feminist tone, The Debrief changed the way brands engage with and speak to their audience online,” Lauren Holleyoake, launch publisher of The Debrief, said in Bauer Media’s release. “We created a brand that really ‘got’ our audience and their lives in a way no-one had before.”

I wrote for the Debrief when it first launched and I'm gutted by this news. It gave so many young women their first break in media and was full of talented journalists doing great work https://t.co/Ni826ujZLp

— Zing Tsjeng (@misszing) April 24, 2018

Sad to hear that The Debrief is closing. Their #MadAboutThePill investigation into the mental health effects of the pill raised awareness of an issue I and many other women care deeply about – and it was one of many awesome and important campaigns. https://t.co/XtjHXEsVML

— Jess Denham (@jess_denham) April 24, 2018

Really sad news for everyone involved. The Debrief was one of the first places that commissioned me and lots of my friends – it was always open to promoting female voices and allowing them to talk about what really affected them. https://t.co/ybez43QdZD

— Rhiannon Evans (@rhiannonev) April 24, 2018