Confronting Condé

Late on Wednesday night, four Condé Nast staffers were unceremoniously fired from the glossy magazine publisher after participating in a union protest. The journalists were questioning chief people officer Stan Duncan outside his 34th floor office at 1 World Trade Center, attempting to gain clarity on a wave of layoffs that had just rocked the newsroom. “I just didn't think there was any chance of getting fired for participating in a union activity like this,” Jake Lahut, a senior politics reporter for WIRED who was fired after the incident, told Status.

The legacy publisher’s latest turmoil—a perfect storm of firings, layoffs and leaks—has exposed dramatically sinking morale, as executives look to cut their way to long-term success, squeezing top editors to operate publications with far fewer resources in a bid to adapt to the rapidly changing media ecosystem.

That state of affairs is hardly unique to Condé Nast, but those forces feel particularly jarring for a company with a rich history of elite publications and high-profile editorial talent, such as Anna Wintour, who concluded her decades-long reign as editor of Vogue by handing over those responsibilities to Chloe Malle in September.

By contrast, conversations with over half a dozen current and former employees indicate that some editorial staffers are starting to wonder whether those at the top—including boss Roger Lynch, Duncan, and Wintour, who also serves as at-large global editorial director—care to understand how to best serve their publications, each of which have unique and substantially varying needs. From that perspective, what transpired last week brought some of those tensions boiling into public view.

“The union's been trying to get some basic answers on what's been going on with these layoffs,” Lahut said. “I approached this conversation in good faith and because our other attempts to meet had gone unanswered.”

By that point, most of the external negative reaction to the absorption of Teen Vogue into the broader Vogue properties, and the resulting staff cuts, had died down. But the seemingly rash decision to axe four staffers and suspend another five without a thorough investigation into their behavior, only stoked internal anger over the recent belt-tightening when news of the firings leaked Thursday, leaving editorial staffers to further question what management could be thinking.

On Monday, the company kicked off its latest wave of staff reductions. The publication most impacted was Teen Vogue, which will be folded into the Vogue website, with editor-in-chief Versha Sharma departing soon, and at least six editorial staffers laid off in the process.

The brand itself was profitable in 2023, as was the Teen Vogue Summit, which exceeded revenue goals annually, according to people familiar with the matter. But instead of using that momentum for additional growth, Condé Nast decided to cut the publication to the bone. As the broader company strategizes how to capture a younger audience whose attention tends to be drawn to social media, the company may have squandered an opportunity to appeal to that valuable, hard-to-reach demographic.

"Teen Vogue has faced ongoing challenges around scale and audience reach for some time,” a spokesperson for Condé Nast told Status. “Rather than continuing to operate independently bringing Teen Vogue under the Vogue umbrella allows it to tap into a larger audience, stronger distribution and more resources."

As anticipated, the cultural influence that Teen Vogue once wielded, and the pointed political reporting it offered readers over the last decade, generated a fair amount of both nostalgia and negative blowback over the decision. But lost in the shuffle of the Teen Vogue news were other significant cuts across Condé’s portfolio, including Vanity Fair, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, and more. (Disclosure: Before joining Status, I worked at Vanity Fair.)

According to multiple people familiar with the matter, those impacted include head of audio Chris Bannon and Jesse Ashlock, the deputy global editorial director and U.S. head of editorial for CN Traveler. Additionally, Content Integrity Group employees, which includes the copy editing and fact checking units, were cut across brands, including two production staffers for Vanity Fair, while mid-level marketing employees were also laid off.

Such cutbacks have become commonplace, but this time, top editors were blindsided by the changes to their staff, including some who were deemed integral to publication processes, Status has learned.

What’s shaken people most across Condé Nast is that two of the four staffers fired were employed by The New Yorker and WIRED, publications internally viewed as off limits for cuts. Leadership making major personnel decisions puts top editors David Remnick and Katie Drummond in an impossible position, having to deal with the fallout as they grapple with losing valued colleagues.

Meanwhile, what should have been the standard bout of bad press that comes along with enacting cost-cutting measures and shuttering a beloved brand has turned into a days-long public drama. Indeed, some staffers wondered if leadership—having “shot themselves in the foot,” as one put it—might wave the white flag in surrender and reverse the firings to dig out of the hole they created.

Even then, that might be too late to regain internal confidence, with several Condé Nast staffers telling Status the main takeaway from last week’s events is that anyone could be next on the chopping block. “They are sending a message,” one staffer said. “Put it out there that we don't give a fuck who you are or which publication you're coming from.”

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