Yews.News

About

Yews.News is a news aggregation site created by musician and designer Kanye West. Three times a day, it aggregates a list of ten news stories and presents summaries of them and links in a minimalist, mobile-only format. The site is only available on phones, and each story is illustrated with a single engraving made by 19th-century mystical poet William Blake.

History

Following a series of controversies related to antisemitic remarks and behaviors in 2022 and 2023, Kanye West's star dimmed. However, he retained control of his design studio and various other ventures.

West filed for the trademark for the word "Yews" in October of 2023, leading to some speculation about words other than "news" which "yews" sounds like.^[1]

The site officially debuted on December 13th, 2023.^[2] The images below show (L-R) the site's homepage on December 20th, 2023, and two expanded views of stories with the accompanying illustrations.

On a "masthead" page which was later deleted, the site appeared to show Milo Yiannopolous as a staff member. While the "masthead" page listing Yiannopolous' name was scrubbed from the web, a Google search showed some of the copy which was formerly there and users on both Reddit and X discussed Milo Yiannoppolous' involvement.^[3]

Features

Yews.news is a news aggregator which publishes a list of ten stories three times a day. The tens tories are sourced from around the web, and generally seem to reflect the interests and rightward-leaning political priorities of Kanye West, although his level of personal involvement is unclear. The stories are summarized in a few sentences and then a link back to the original source is included.^[4]

The site is only available on mobile. The web design is minimailist, with no "About" section as of December 2023 and a collapsible/expandable scroll which means no new windows or tabs are opened. TikToker @tednotlasso posted a video reviewing the new site, earning over 11,000 likes and 100,000 views in a week on December 14th, 2023.^[5]

Each story is accompanied by an engraving by mystical poet and illustrator William Blake.

Related Memes

Kanye West / Ye

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is an American rapper and producer well known for his best-selling records and trendsetting fashion style. West began pursuing a career in music as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records^[1] and by 2004, West had released first record album, which won that year's Best Rap Album Grammy award.^[2] On the internet, West is well known for his self-absorbed and often erratic tweets, as well as his on-stage interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009.

External References