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On January 23rd, Anna Wintour was in Paris and watched the Armani Prive couture show from the front row of the Palais de Tokyo. Meanwhile, back at the ranch in lower Manhattan, Condé Nast staffers have staged an open revolt, picketing the West Side Highway outside One World Trade’s headquarters. A series of union members enraged the crowd. “Be brave, be brave, do something outrageous, because right now there are these guys in suits upstairs at the conference table, mocking you for how weak you are. ” one said. “Really? Are you weak?” “No!” the crowd roared back.
This is a particularly dire time to be employed there, and almost everywhere else in the media. It feels like a lot of the media industry has been put through the trash compactor these days. time There were layoffs at the magazine, sports illustrated He was essentially euthanized. Conde strike day, LA times More than 20 percent of the newsroom was laid off. Two days after the strike, Business Insider announced that it would lay off 8 percent of its employees.The Washington post They just acquired 240 employees.Journalists realized that journalism might almost cease to exist. And whatever form it takes will be shaped by management teams that don’t have a clear understanding of how to create a sustainable business.
Condé’s unionized employees are negotiating a new contract with management, and in November a list began circulating with the names of the 94 employees who will be shown through the door after the contract is signed. (Labor law prohibits canning employees during negotiations). These people are expected to work until the moment they are no longer employed, but no one knows when that will be. Last week, Winter told staff the pitchforks were folded. GQRumors quickly spread that she didn’t bother removing her signature sunglasses when she broke the news, but that didn’t necessarily make it any less shocking. (As a person, trend (She pointed out to me that she wears prescription sunglasses to almost every meeting.) Enough was enough: About 400 employees were in the middle of Paris Fashion Week, with Oscar nominations on the way. We stopped working for 24 hours on the day it was announced.”
Alma Avalle, 25-year-old writer and web producer. Bon Appétit A person wearing a “Free Palestine” patch gave a Philippine speech to executives. But when asked what he thought about Winter’s stewardship in particular, Avalle nervously replied: “Hmm, no comment.” I finally found a hero. teen vogue Employees willing to go there. She told her her name and her position, and she said it was time for Winter to leave. A few hours later, a panicked union representative emailed me saying: teen vogue The employee was “very nervous about having her statements quoted (especially about Anna). As you can imagine, there are still a lot of concerns about the repercussions when it comes to Anna. “Would you please?” A union representative said, “My secret goal at Condé Nast is to make workers feel confident enough to go on record and say, “Fuck Anna Wintour.” (Laughter) ” he added.
It’s still some “wild shit” that no one seems ready to do. Anacondas still evoke fear and respect. The company would be in even worse shape if it weren’t for its relationships with high-end advertising companies, on which Mr. Condé still relies. CEO Roger Lynch is a different story.Employees happily took out the trash he On record. “We have been in discussions with Roger Lynch since negotiations began,” Abare explained. “We marched to his office. No response.” Panic has long permeated within One World Trade, and perhaps Mr. Lynch has no choice but to cut editorial budgets to keep the business afloat. I don’t think there is a basic plan in place to make this happen.
Lynch is not the only target. Journalists are increasingly blaming the collapse of the news business on the Internet and vast technological forces beyond their control. They blame business owners who seem unable to plan for a combination of subscriptions, declining advertising costs, e-commerce sales and revenue from events. This is what successful executives have accomplished in New York. times, wall street journal, And elsewhere too. It’s not a glamorous or sexy business model. This is hard work that requires scraping together small amounts of money, and no matter how much union activity you do, it is a reality that cannot be avoided.
Mr. Lynch, 61, has no experience in journalism. He came to Condé in his 2019. He previously ran the music streaming service Pandora. He’s all his CEO He’s a classic rock cover called Merger He leads a band He plays guitar. new yorker Editor David Remnick offers suggestions for top jobs.
Lynch spent his first years as CEO building an in-house video studio, Condé Nast Entertainment. He hired Disney executive Agnes Chu to run the company in 2020. In October of this year, he sent a memo saying that Chu would be retiring and that CNE would be reorganized. The memo contained little explanation as to why what Mr. Lynch had touted as the company’s future suddenly disappeared.
His main accomplishment was streamlining the brand’s international edition and transforming the publisher into one global newsroom reporting to New York and Winter. Much wasteful spending has been cut, many independent-minded foreign editors have retired, and last year Mr. Condé moved from Vogue House, the luxurious seven-storey building he had occupied for 60 years in London’s Hanover Square. moved. (in the UK in November) trend We published a sad farewell issue dedicated to all the fashion history that happened there. )
The company says it plans to direct resources to promising areas of its newly combined empire: Lynch has just opened an office in Dubai and is ramping up. Condé Nast Traveler In Germany, Winter said “trend The ‘World’ event was held for the first time in London last year (and will be held in Paris this year). But there’s only so much to do, and it’s the editorial staff in New York who are feeling the pinch. The US title has had to make do with significantly fewer people for years, but the proposed cuts feel like a breaking point to many. All of this leads to concerns that Lynch still has little understanding or appreciation of all that it takes to make a magazine magical.
“There are a lot of executives, writers, researchers, editors, who are far removed from the people who do the day-to-day work,” said Maralie Santucci, 39, a TV cooking producer. Bon Appétit, I said from the picket line. “A lot of their plans seem opaque,” agreed Gaylord Fields, 63, a copy manager at the company’s headquarters. GQ.
Personnel changes and reorganization have reached the point where Conde has thrown out the talent it brought in to replace the previous generation of talent. vanity fair Looks especially at risk. The currently circulating list of 94 Fateful Employees includes 10 of the editorial staff. Delia Cai, 30, a senior correspondent on the list, said: “Everyone has been doing nothing for years and making ends meet, so when something like this happens, things start falling apart from here.” “It might end up being a problem,” he says. She said: “You’d be surprised how few people support it.” VFRadhika Jones, the editor-in-chief of “, was in charge of all this? “Radhika was the real deal,” Kai said with satisfaction. “I don’t think she has a lot of answers or clarity either. I think she’s said what she can say, but I also think she’s openly expressing her dissatisfaction.” I told Tsai. , asked who was most furious about the way things were going. “It’s Roger, right?”
What makes this big moment in media feel so hopeless is that many executives, including Mr. Lynch, don’t seem to care at all about what’s going on with the business.Jeff Bezos post, Our Instagram feeds are filled with photos of Ivanka Trump and Kim Kardashian rocking it out in Beverly Hills. You half wonder every time Lauren Sanchez posts a weird photo of herself at another tacky party or on a boat. teeth that Where the newspaper company’s “Metro” budget disappeared?Patrick Soon-Shiong, the unlucky billionaire who owns Los Angeles times, He allowed his interventionist daughter to antagonize one of the country’s most respected editors, Kevin Merida. Merida finally gave up on the eve of his brutal dismissal.baltimore Sun The book was purchased in January by a right-wing culture warrior, who readily admitted he had never even read the book before. That’s exactly what it is. The worst people dance together on the rim of the volcano as journalists fall into the caldera.
But there was something particularly sad about seeing the people of Conde picketing outside their ruined palaces in the cold. Manhattan is supposed to be the media capital of the world. What would happen to us if we didn’t have one elite, glamorous magazine publisher? While Wintour has her detractors, many within the company told me they don’t feel comfortable speaking against her. Because even now that she’s 74 years old, she’s still doing everything in her power to keep it all together. She seems to understand that media is a business, but certainly, if you don’t have something worth selling, something worth subscribing to or advertising on, everything falls apart . “It’s hard for her to understand what’s going on,” said one of Winter’s close friends in the building. “But I think it’s beyond her job to resolve this. I don’t see how it will be fixed.”
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