Monday 13th September: Why Terri White left the best job in magazines

September 13, 2021

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“The reality is, if I hadn’t have had my baby, I would still be editing EMPIRE now,” Terri White tells us. “And that’s a hard pill for me to swallow, because you don’t imagine that you would have to make that choice in this day and age.”

This is a write-up of part of Terri's interview with us this week - you can listen to the full episode here. Her explanation about why she had to leave the top job at her beloved EMPIRE - which she still calls the best job in the world - will ring true for many women in the industry.

It's time for employers to make practical, tangible differences to allow mothers to stay in work. Otherwise, talented women like Terri will continue to have to choose between the jobs they love and their families:

“People are talking about why we haemorrhage women after they have kids. The way it’s presented is, we make a choice. We go, ‘Oh, I’ve had a baby. Now I don’t need a job.’

“That isn’t what happens. It’s that life becomes too difficult.”

Impressive growth at first glance, but that's off the back of a sudden and steep revenue shortfall last year due to Covid. Commerce is driving much of the growth, with revenue increasing 82% year on year. The company is still unprofitable though, posting a net loss of $789,000 for the quarter. Some interesting numbers here given their plans to go public towards the end of the year.

The designer spectacles are meant to be a stepping stone towards "full augmented reality glasses", according to Mark Zuckerberg, but contain no AR features. Features look pretty limited - 30 second videos and just 5MP photos - but they look a lot more grown up than Snap's Spectacles (which have had to write off more than £29m since their launch in 2016 as they misjudged demand).

In a post that will either make you laugh or cry, Luke Winkie brutally tears down legacy media publications that should have shuffled off their mortal coils a long time ago. "I think we'd all appreciate it if the investor class would stop taking up residence in the bloated, desiccated corpses of Former Magazines," he argues.

This week's podcast:

In this special episode of Media Voices, former Editor in Chief of EMPIRE Terri White takes us through the changes she made during her time at the magazine. She also expounds her reasons for resigning from EMPIRE – a role that she still today calls the best job in the world – and the realities of juggling family life with a top job in media.

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