Tumult inside media companies shows a toxic industry

We all have a notion there's something more to do

It’s pretty remarkable looking at how the media landscape has shifted over the last three years. The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements have emboldened staffers to start speaking up about how media companies are not immune to the implicit (and in some cases, explicit) racism and sexism that make headlines with other businesses and industries.

Yesterday, CNN published a deeply reported story about the turmoil inside Refinery29, interviewing 60 current and former employees who say the company, whose website targets women and was bought by Vice, was toxic. 

a number of former employees came forward on Twitter to call out what they saw as hypocrisy on the part of the website's leadership, especially when it came to matters of race and diversity. The site's co-founder and editor-in-chief, Christene Barberich, had repeatedly confused one black woman with another, one said; another tweeted that an executive once confused her with the caterer; a third person said she was paid $15,000 less than her two white coworkers who were doing the same job. And within less than a week, Barberich was out of her job, saying on Monday she was stepping down "to help diversify our leadership in editorial.

Barberich wasn’t the only executive at a website built to empower women to step down this week amid calls for media companies to focus their lenses on their own houses. 

Leandra Cohen, founder of fashion site Man Repeller, is taking a time-out after criticisms the site isn’t holding up to its mission of making “women feel more understood and less alone” following “numerous attempts by the blog to weigh in on the current conversations around racism, social justice, and inclusivity,” according to BuzzFeed.

Critics were swift in holding Man Repeller to account by pointing out its lack of diversity and criticized what the brand represented. One commentator wrote: “I’m sorry but MR can never be inclusive. You’d have to change your entire raison d'etre.”

Much of the content was criticized as being “tone-deaf” and catering to “skinny white rich cis women.

Audrey Gelman, founder and CEO of The Wing, “an upscale women-only club and co-working space,” according to the New York Times, resigned Thursday. From the NYT:

Shortly after she did so, employees went on virtual strike to protest her leadership and to ask for sweeping changes to the management of the Wing, especially its treatment of black and brown employees.

Bon Appetite's editor Adam Rapoport resigned after a photo of him in brownface resurfaced and the swift backlash of staffers discussing the toxic culture Rapoport created. 

Now the eyes are on the doyenne of Conde Nast. In a piece with the headline, “Can Anna Wintour survive the social justice movement,” the New York Times writes:

Ms. Wintour clearly believes that she can break from the past and kill off any vestiges of a system steeped in the benighted values for which she has become the corporate avatar. The public apology from Bon Appétit was quite startling in its admission of failure, particularly its concession that the magazine “continued to tokenize” the people of color that it did hire.

As part of her contribution to this new wave of progressivism, Ms. Wintour wrote a piece for Vogue.com a week after the death of George Floyd, aligning herself with Black Lives Matter and calling on Joe Biden to select an African-American woman as his running mate.

For someone who had seemed so averse to activism as the world has roiled from inequality for years, it felt like a desperate grasp for relevance. A spokesman for the company bristled at the suggestion, arguing that it is Condé Nast’s job “to cover what’s going on in the culture in the moment.”

A nuance worth considering—each of these examples, from Refinery29 to Man Repeller to The Wing, were built with a certain kind of sleight-of-hand philosophy: build and segment a particular audience, which by definition, will be exclusionary. This is the implicit and systemic changes the industry needs to make.

So it shouldn’t be all surprising that when you build a company targeting one type of person and get investors to support that vision, you’re going to run headfirst into a problematic wall when you put out empty platitudes of inclusion.

You can’t say “empowerment to women” and then be bemused after creating a culture and policies that belie inclusion. Empowerment to women shades over the obvious:

"Walking around that office when I worked there, it was very white, very straight," a former Refinery29 producer told CNN.  "That always bugged me. It's not what I expected. It's not that they didn't believe in the message, but the talent needs to reflect the content they are producing."

Of course, the flip side is: don’t treat employees like trash, right? CNN’s piece on Refinery29 isn’t just an indictment on that particular company. It’s something that many journalists across many newsrooms talk about, often. We can all see aspects of our companies in this piece. 

And because journalists, by occupational definition, seek answers to questions, the surprising thing isn’t how many media companies have perpetuated classist, racist and sexist organizations, but why haven’t reporters spoken up? The answer is simple: we’re afraid to lose our jobs. 

But the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movement have given reporters and other employees the confidence to stand up to their leadership. We will see more media companies and executives held accountable for their bad behaviors in the coming months, from the national to the regional, from the general to the trades. The Slack screenshots will come out one day. 

When it comes to leadership, many media CEOs are blind to the toxicity they create because they only see in one color: green. It’s time for CEOs and their hand-picked editorial leadership to reassess their values and build work environments that line up with the ideals of journalism: to tell the stories, with neither fear nor favor, that help understand and shape our world. But most important: treat people fairly, equitably, justly.

Thank you for allowing me in your inbox every day. It truly is humbling to see how this dinky newsletter is growing a community of marketers, publishers, agencies and vendors to engage in conversations that can make our industry a better one. I see it in the discussions on LinkedIn and Twitter, and of course all of the emails you sent. (You can send me tips and thoughts on the newsletter to my inbox.) As I wrap up week 7 of this little experiment, just want to thank all 2482 of you. And please share the newsletter with your teams, and get them to sign up.

Hope you can take some time to relax this weekend, and I’ll see you on Monday.

Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A Changin’”

Some interesting links:

• As protests spread, misinformation in Facebook Groups tears small towns apart (Mashable)

• Journalism's Top Ethics Expert Isn't Concerned With Right and Wrong (Vice)

• An agency exec offers pointed measures in working with Facebook (LinkedIn)

• Facebook pitched new tool allowing employers to suppress words like “unionize” in workplace chat product (The Intercept)

• What It Will Take To Make the Indoors Feel Safe Again (WSJ)

• Trump’s most loyal media ally promised a pro-Trump poll. It didn’t deliver — and then pulled its story. (WaPo)

• Children now spending as much time on TikTok as YouTube (WARC)

• Big advertiser call for a seasonal time-shift in TV’s upfront marketplace (WSJ)

• Heath Freeman is the hedge fund guy who says he wants to save local news. Somehow, no one’s buying it. (WaPo)