Six months after the Slate Group launched Double X as "a new kind of women's online magazine," it's being transformed into a section of Slate.com, a very old kind of men's online magazine.

It's unclear what, if anything, that means, but it's strange that the Slate Group—the unit of the Washington Post Co. that publishes Slate, the Root, Slate V, and The Big Money—would reverse itself so soon after launching Double X to much fanfare just a few months ago. The site grew out of the XX Factor, a group blog launched in 2007 that was, um, a section of Slate. When we heard a rumor that Slate was pulling the plug on Double X, we asked Slate Group editor in chief Jacob Weisberg about it, and he responded, "It's going to become a section of Slate, but otherwise pretty much as it has been. Not sure readers will know the difference—most think it's a section of Slate now. There will be still be a homepage at doublex.com."

We asked Weisberg if there would be any layoffs associated with the switch and he said, "Emily Bazelon and Hanna Rosin still co-editing and running it with a semi-autonomous editorial team a la Slate V." Very strange. As you can see from the logo, Double X never made it out of beta.

If you know of any more about what's happening at Double X, let us know.

Update: Shortly after this post went live Bazelon and Rosin posted about the coming changes to Double X. They echo Weisberg in saying that while they'll no longer be editing a standalone site, people won't notice the difference. But they add the change is being done for "business reasons" — making us suspect that there may be some job cuts as part of the move. Here's there statement in full: