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Betches Media's Sami Sage on Reaching People Through Humor and Championing Women's Rights

Betches Media's Sami Sage on Reaching People Through Humor and Championing Women's Rights
Betches Media

Betches Media's Sami Sage on Reaching People Through Humor and Championing Women's Rights

Today, Betches Media is one of the first and only major media companies completely founded and run by women, something its co-founder believes "has really helped set us apart in the women's media space."

What started off as a blog over a decade ago has now turned into a multimillion dollar brand.


As one of the pioneering women behind Betches Media, co-founder Sami Sage has long worked to combine humor with current events. Though it was a fun project between friends at first, Sage's writing quickly went viral among other young women online, eventually reaching people from all walks of life.

"We had thought we were just kind of writing for our immediate demographic," she tells Sonia Baghdady of Advocate Now. "But we saw pretty quickly how people resonated with it. And because we were anonymous at first, a lot of people thought they were just reading something that their best friend wrote."

Advocate Now | Sami Sage 

Today, Betches Media is one of the first and only major media companies founded and run by women, something its creator believes "has really helped set us apart in the women's media space."

"When you think about a lot of women's media, a lot of it isn't even owned by women," Sage explains. "But this is a company that was founded in friendship."

The company branched out into covering politics ahead of the 2016 election, as Sage noted she saw the political climate "change drastically."

"It was such an important time to get involved politically," she says. "We felt that we had built enough trust with our audience by that time that they could come to us in the news and politics space and would be open and receptive to that from us, and I think our audience was craving it at that time."

Though it was important to use her platform for advocacy, Sage also found it critical to keep content humorous, as a way to make current events more digestible. The tumultuous time also marked a chance for the company to shift away from comedy deemed more "mean-spirited."

While Sage is a proponent of comedy in various forms, she appreciates the way in which the artform has become more inclusive.

"There's been this a new space created for more positive, more inclusive comedy. Comedy that touches different communities and shares, more unique, diverse views and is still extremely funny," Sage says, adding, "Mean spirited comedy, I don't know if that's ever going to go away. The really good thing is that there's now space and channels and and a demand for other types of comedy."

For more interviews like these, watch Advocate Now on The Advocate Channel.

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Ryan Adamczeski

Digital Director

Ryan is the Digital Director of The Advocate Channel, and a graduate of New York University Tisch's Department of Dramatic Writing, with a focus in television writing and comedy. She is also a member of GALECA, the LGBTQ+ society of entertainment critics.

Ryan is the Digital Director of The Advocate Channel, and a graduate of New York University Tisch's Department of Dramatic Writing, with a focus in television writing and comedy. She is also a member of GALECA, the LGBTQ+ society of entertainment critics.