Friday 23rd April: Wired.com staffers resign, citing ‘burnout’ and ‘exhaustion’

April 23, 2021

Good morning! Friday's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

It was interesting, if a little sad, to read about two top Wired.com employees stepping down. Wired.com editor Megan Greenwell cited “burnout” and Wired site director Scott Rosenfield blamed "exhaustion".

Megan, who we interviewed when she was heading up Deadspin, recently wrote a column for Wired about “how to cope when your company lays off all its support staff and you no longer have time to do your actual job.” Coincidentally, Conde Nast laid off 100 people last year.

I have no idea what working at Wired.com is like, but the story of more work less people has been a familiar one in publishing for years (long before COVID). I can imagine the increased pressures over the last year have taken their toll and I wonder if this story from Axios about the record number of journalists unionising in the US is connected in any way 🤔

The New York Times is reporting international action against Big Tech as evidence that world governments have had enough. Underlying all of the disputes is a common thread: Power. The 10 largest tech firms, gatekeepers in commerce, finance, entertainment and communications, have a GDP that would rank them as the world’s third-largest economy.

Almost exactly a year after everyone took out a bunch of subscriptions to make staying at home more tolerable, the FT has been getting busy with its retention efforts. 'It's not necessarily everyone's role to acquire customers, but it's definitely everyone's role to retain them,' says Fiona Spooner, MD of consumer revenue.

The Guardian is the latest media brand to be handing back the furlough cash it got to help it through last year's lockdowns. Parent company GMG will return £1.6m, citing a 'substantially improved financial position'. While income from print and ads is down, and overall revenues are flat, online subscriptions and one-off contributions rose by 61% to £69 million.

This week's episode:

This week, we hear from The Wall Street Journal’s Editor of Live Journalism and Special Content Kim Last. She talks about the role of live journalism at the publication, how they adapted when the pandemic hit, and what they are doing to bring events and networking to life virtually.

We couldn't meet in-person for the Publisher Podcast Awards this year, but Wednesday afternoon we held a virtual event, bringing as much of the magic as we could to the living rooms of podcasters around the world. Find out who won here.