For the roughly 100 workers who have recently joined Condé Nast’s “central editorial group,” work has taken a bizarre turn in the last few months.
In November, 94 Condé Union staffers at the glamorous media company behind Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and Bon Appétit — across editorial, video and audience development — learned that they had been earmarked to be laid off as part of a company-wide cost-cutting push. (Workers at Condé Nast titles The New Yorker and Wired belong to separate unions.) But the cuts wouldn’t happen immediately: Because the NewsGuild of New York-affiliated union didn’t yet have its first contract in place, which would include terms and conditions for job cuts, the labor group maintained that the proposed layoffs had to be negotiated as part of the talks over the agreement and the employees remained in limbo at their brands, waiting to learn their fate.
An uneasy deadlock prevailed until January, when according to sources, Condé Nast began moving individuals on the proposed layoffs list out of their previous jobs and into a centralized team working across the brands as contract negotiations dragged on. (What this overall group is called is the subject of some confusion: One source recalls it being named something along the lines of a “centralized support team” early on. Writers say they belong to the “central editorial team.” The company has referred to the larger group internally as a “central editorial group.”) A few months later, nine additional workers were added to the layoffs list; some of the listed employees have since left the company or been elevated off of the list, and now 95 are installed in the centralized group, per a NewsGuild representative.
It was awkward enough for employees on the list to remain at the company for months. And then there were the new tasks they were assigned: According to group members who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter, work for some has consisted of writing summaries of Condé Nast’s previous coverage of various topics and “cultural significance profiles” of public figures; on the video side, it’s involved identifying favorable time stamps in past events coverage for sizzle reels. “It’s so weird. I can’t emphasize enough how weird it is,” says former GQ articles editor Chris Gayomali. He calls his state over the last few months a “purgatory.”
As the union and the company remain locked in a contentious labor negotiation with no end yet in sight, several members of the centralized group spoke with THR about their state of suspension in what some are referring to as a “rubber room.”
The work has been rote. Some respected writers and editors recently at prestigious publications — still being paid their full salaries from their previous roles — are working on summaries of how Condé Nast publications have covered female film directors, best picture Oscar winners and Grammy album of the year award winners since 1980 and U.S. vice presidents and first ladies since 1920, according to sources. Others are producing short “cultural significance profiles” of such figures as chefs José Andrés, Ina Garten and Pierre Thiam; Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA); and Semafor co-founders Ben Smith and Justin Smith.
The point of at least part of this work, it’s understood in some quarters, is to help contribute to special interest publications, essentially Condé Nast’s versions of Time magazine’s one-off magazine on the future of medicine or an Us tribute to Matthew Perry or the royals.
“You kind have to laugh to keep from crying because it’s such a waste of everyone’s just time and energy and talent,” says Delia Cai, formerly a senior Vanities correspondent for Vanity Fair, of the tasks.
On the video side, union steward and former GQ video editor Doug Guida says he has been tasked “to go through past years [of] event coverage that we’ve done of the Oscars and the Met Gala and pick out time codes from all of the coverage to be used in sizzles, at probably NewFronts.” Guida, who previously ran GQ’s TikTok channel, which currently has over one million followers, says his current assignments are “the stuff that I used to do when I was an intern at post houses in college.”
Morale, according to those in the unit, is varied. There are those who are insulted and/or checked out. There are others who, while facing the reality of tedious work that is a demotion from past roles, acknowledge some gratitude to have the space and financial stability to plan their next move in a grueling media job market. The tasks they have been assigned apparently aren’t particularly time-sensitive (several editorial assignments do not have word counts, and no one who spoke for this story mentioned a due date for written work).
While some are more skeptical or have lost hope, others believe they could eventually get their old jobs back, depending on what the union negotiates. “This is our first contract. It’s going to inform layoffs in the future. And so this set of layoffs is going to be really important for that,” says Guida. “So I think there is hope that we can get back into our jobs because it is such an important part of the contract bargaining right now.”
It’s unclear how long the situation could continue. Led by chief negotiator and NewsGuild local representative Lena Solow, the union maintains that the November layoffs need to be negotiated as part of its overall first contract package, a process that has been ongoing so far for at least a year. Ultimately, if the union’s position holds, members of the centralized group will have to wait for a full agreement to be reached to know how they will move forward — like if any jobs will be saved, the amount of severance and whether there could be any voluntary buyouts. Bargaining dates have recently occurred about two times a week.
Meanwhile, the company, whose negotiations have been led by in-house counsel Cameron Bruce, has pushed for a faster timeline for talks on layoffs. In a March 28 update on the negotiations to staffers, the company’s People Team said, “The overall contract negotiations do not have to slow down talks on the proposed workforce reduction. We continue to ask the union to negotiate the workforce reduction with us so we can find resolution for everybody.” In the same update, the company noted that the union and management had so far agreed to 13 out of about 40 sections in the contract and that collective bargaining on a first-time contract “often takes up to two years.” By April 5, when the company put out its latest update on talks, the two sides hadn’t yet agreed on workforce reduction language.
And both sides have sought to hold the other accountable for alleged bad-faith bargaining during the process: In January, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge at the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the company had engaged in regressive bargaining by offering the union a worse deal on severance than previously discussed — in other words, moving backward rather than forward in negotiations. Management followed with its own unfair labor practice charge in March, dinging the union for not taking its workforce reduction proposal “seriously” and only previously offering one proposal on layoffs that demanded 66 union jobs be restored, with a minimum of seven months of COBRA and severance for those cut. Both cases remain open at the NLRB.
In the meantime, the workers in the centralized group are waiting to learn what’s next. Says Cai, “We had no idea how long this would take, and I think we still have no idea how much longer it could go on for.”
NPR is facing both internal tumult and a fusillade of attacks by prominent conservatives this week after a senior editor publicly claimed the broadcaster had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage, risking its trust with audiences.
Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published Tuesday by The Free Press, a popular Substack publication, that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”
Mr. Berliner, a Peabody-award winning journalist, castigated NPR for what he said was a litany of journalistic missteps around coverage of several major news events, including the origins of Covid-19 and the war in Gaza. He also said that the internal culture at NPR had placed race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”
Mr. Berliner’s essay has ignited a firestorm of criticism of NPR on social media, especially among conservatives who have long accused the network of political bias in its reporting. Former President Donald J. Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to argue that NPR’s government funding should be rescinded, an argument he has made in the past.
NPR has forcefully pushed back on Mr. Berliner’s accusations and the criticism.
“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” Edith Chapin, the organization’s editor in chief, said in an email to staff on Tuesday. “We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.” Some other NPR journalists also criticized the essay publicly, including Eric Deggans, its TV critic, who faulted Mr. Berliner for not giving NPR an opportunity to comment on the piece.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Berliner expressed no regrets about publishing the essay, saying that he loved NPR and hoped to make it better by airing criticisms that have gone unheeded by leaders for years. He called NPR a “national trust” that people rely on for fair reporting and superb storytelling.
“I decided to go out and publish it in hopes that something would change, and that we get a broader conversation going about how the news is covered,” Mr. Berliner said.
He said that he had not been disciplined by managers, though he said he received a note from his supervisor reminding him that NPR requires employees to clear speaking appearances and media requests with standards and media relations. He said he didn’t run his remarks to The New York Times by network spokespeople.
When the hosts of NPR’s biggest shows, including “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” convened on Wednesday afternoon for a long-scheduled meet-and-greet with the network’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher, conversation soon turned to Mr. Berliner’s essay, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. During the lunch, Ms. Chapin told the hosts that she didn’t want Mr. Berliner to become a “martyr,” the people said.
Mr. Berliner’s essay also sent critical Slack messages whizzing through some of the same employee affinity groups focused on racial and sexual identity that he cited in his essay. In one group, several staff members disputed Mr. Berliner’s points about a lack of ideological diversity and said that efforts to recruit more people of color would make NPR’s journalism better.
On Wednesday, staff members from “Morning Edition” convened to discuss the fallout from Mr. Berliner’s essay. During the meeting, an NPR producer took issue with Mr. Berliner’s argument for why NPR’s listenership has fallen off, describing a variety of factors that have contributed to the change.
Mr. Berliner’s remarks prompted vehement pushback from several news executives. Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor of standards and practices, said in an interview that he rejected all of Mr. Berliner’s claims of unfairness, adding that his remarks would probably make it harder for NPR journalists to do their jobs.
“The next time one of our people calls up a Republican congressman or something and tries to get an answer from them, they may well say, ‘Oh, I read these stories, you guys aren’t fair, so I’m not going to talk to you,’” Mr. Cavin said.
Some journalists have defended Mr. Berliner’s essay. Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, NPR’s former ombudsman, said Mr. Berliner was “not wrong” on social media. Chuck Holmes, a former managing editor at NPR, called Mr. Berliner’s essay “brave” on Facebook.
Mr. Berliner’s criticism was the latest salvo within NPR, which is no stranger to internal division. In October, Mr. Berliner took part in a lengthy debate over whether NPR should defer to language proposed by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association while covering the conflict in Gaza.
“We don’t need to rely on an advocacy group’s guidance,” Mr. Berliner wrote, according to a copy of the email exchange viewed by The New York Times. “Our job is to seek out the facts and report them.” The debate didn’t change NPR’s language guidance, which is made by editors who weren’t part of the discussion.
Mr. Berliner’s public criticism has highlighted broader concerns within NPR about the public broadcaster’s mission amid continued financial struggles. Last year, NPR cut 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts, including the popular “Invisibilia,” as it tried to make up for a $30 million budget shortfall. Listeners have drifted away from traditional radio to podcasts, and the advertising market has been unsteady.
In his essay, Mr. Berliner laid some of the blame at the feet of NPR’s former chief executive, John Lansing, who retired at the end of last year after four years in the role. He was replaced by Ms. Maher, who started on March 25.
During a meeting with employees in her first week, Ms. Maher was asked what she thought about decisions to give a platform to political figures like Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican Party chair whose position as a political analyst at NBC News became untenable after an on-air revolt from hosts who criticized her efforts to undermine the 2020 election.
“I think that this conversation has been one that does not have an easy answer,” Ms. Maher responded.