Digest 9/27/2021

Vacation is not a solution to burnout, editing Substacks on the cheap, and more.

THE DREAD OF THE POST-LAYOFF ARTICLE

At my first media job, my layoff happened pretty much in the middle of what would turn out to be my last article for the publication. It was a quiz titled “Which classic Meg Ryan movie are you?” which is perhaps why, after finding out the news, I went straight to the top of the Empire State Building to have a melancholy Sleepless In Seattle moment. From what I remember, the quiz didn’t actually go live until a day or two later, meaning my byline was front and center of a publication that I not only no longer worked for, but that had just callously terminated me along with a number of other employees. 

I was reminded of this thanks to a tweet from Ariana Romero, who says she received the meeting invite to be laid off from Refinery29 in the middle of her interview with Pose’s Michaela Jaé. Despite this, she not only completed the interview, but still wrote the whole profile, which dropped last week. 

It’s not just being laid off that can put digital media workers in a weird limbo where their words live on at a company they are no longer affiliated with. Many writers who leave one journalism job for another do so in the middle of unfinished projects, which they leave in the hands of the remaining employees. 

“Having an outstanding piece made it feel like I couldn’t make a complete break from my former company on my last day,” one writer, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells Study Hall over Twitter DM about their own experience leaving a company before their final piece had been published. “I left my job voluntarily but because of editorial constraints and timing, I had to end my involvement in the process earlier than I would have when I was a full-time employee. ”

They waited for the piece to go live to see its final form. There was the pressure of feeling their piece would serve as a swan song for their years of work at the publication. 

“It felt like it had to be one of my better pieces at that job,” they said.

This is yet another thing that makes digital media uniquely tenuous to navigate: it’s unlikely you leave your last day with everything totally in the rear-view mirror. Like a painful break-up, the two of you still have to make a date to return your stuff, so to speak. Luckily, though, the writer we spoke to says that with publication of the article, finally, comes closure. 

“It felt like a relief to have it off my plate and to no longer feel beholden, in terms of tasks, to my former employer.”

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VACATION IS NOT A SOLUTION TO BURNOUT

A Digiday article sparked a day’s worth of discourse last week after former New York Times editor Tim Herrera’s advice for burned-out journalists was to quit their jobs. He acknowledges in the piece that he built a safety net for himself that allowed for him to leave the Times and take a month-long vacation to Hawaii. 

I’m not going to bash Herrera specifically, because if I had the means to quit and go on a long-term vacation, I absolutely would and so would you. I’m sure it would help my feelings of burnout significantly. But it wouldn’t fix them.

In How To Do Nothing — a book I’m going to end up quoting in its entirety during my time at Study Hall — author Jenny Odell writes: “The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn’t to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive.” 

A vacation when you need a break is a temporary reprieve; however, you’re still opting out of changing the behaviors and structures that pushed you to so desperately need that vacation in the first place. It sounds like I’m about to suggest a burned-out worker expend more effort, but it’s just the opposite: We, collectively, need to do less; to refuse what is currently expected of us on a day-to-day basis in this industry. 

I think of this scene from The Office as the perfect example of what resisting burnout in situ at our workplaces looks like: 

“You can pick one of these things,” Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) tells Angela (Angela Kinsey), holding up a series of post-it notes containing tasks on her fingers. “It’s unreasonable for you to ask me to do all of this.”

This kind of resistance may provoke, understandably, a fear that you’ll be discarded in favor of someone who doesn’t set these expectations. This is why we all need to, across the board. I say this to myself as much as to you: normalizing overwork doesn’t just screw you over, but the next person who is then forced to meet unreasonable expectations.

Preventing ourselves from ever reaching that level of burnout through collective action doesn’t entail taking responsibility for it, but instead serving a slow, steady, collective fuck you to the systems that demand it of us. Then, you can go on vacation to Hawaii because you want to (and also, I should add: when it’s not in the middle of a Covid surge), rather than at the tail end of a mental breakdown.

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COMINGS AND GOINGS

— Kristy Puchko is leaving freelance life to join Mashable as Deputy Entertainment Editor.

— According to Marc Tracy, Andrew Julien is taking over from Robert York as interim editor-in-chief of The Daily News, while remaining editor and publisher of The Hartford Courant. 

— Robin Kwong is now the new formats editor at the Wall Street Journal.

— Jillian Goodman has joined The Information as opinion editor. 

— Setareh Baig, Sophie Downes, and Marie Solis have joined the New York Times as editing residents. 

— Natalie Allison is departing The Tennessean to report on the Senate for Politico.

— LaTesha Harris has been promoted to a full-time staff employee at NPR Music after working as an intern and temp. 

— Joshua Rothkopf is joining Entertainment Weekly as their senior editor of movies.

— Melia Russell has been promoted to a correspondent at Insider, writing about venture capital and startups. 

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— Substacks may be booming, but editing them isn’t. Off The Record, our archnemesis, reports that Substack editing pays poorly, to the point that it’s still one of many freelance roles the editors juggle — or even something they secretly do outside their full-time jobs. 

— The New York Times is apparently refusing to correct the names on past bylines of writers who have since transitioned, citing the “sanctity of the archives,” per the Times Guild. As the Guild puts it: “This effectively deadnames them in every piece of previously published work.”

— Vanity Fair broke down the ongoing lawsuit against Instagram account Diet Prada from Dolce & Gabbana, arguing it’s comparable to the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker lawsuit of yore, but for some reason not getting the same level of attention: “The wealthy owners of a famously decadent billion-dollar company are suing two self-employed bloggers for more money than a court ordered Samsung to pay Apple, in 2018, for copying the iPhone.”

— Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point