Data-Labor-Technology

“While I don’t run Opinion, I’m the senior leader of the newsroom,” Baquet wrote to the group in a Slack message obtained by Digiday. “I also believe that some of the points being raised in this channel do point to things the news side can do better. So I’m reading. Thank you.”

When media executives have to put out fires, they meet staffers where they live — on Slack, the enterprise software service where employees communicate, plan, gossip, talk shit about bosses and each other — and increasingly, organize themselves to fight for their rights. The irony of Slack is that media business leaders gravitated to it years ago as a tool to make the labor force more efficient and available at all hours. And now, those same workers are using Slack to fight back against their capitalist bosses. It has become the central forum for the media’s bottom-up revolt, in which empowered, often young staffers are demanding accountability from their managers, outing racist and discriminatory practices, and openly organizing unions to rebalance the power dynamic between management and the rank and file. In the coronavirus work-from-home era, Slack has taken on even greater importance as a mechanism for internal change. It is the new water cooler — one of substance to figure out stories in addition to inane banter about the latest Twitter outrage — and media workers are dumping it on their bosses’ heads. 

“You have to be responsive to people and be in the conversation, otherwise it becomes a conversation from which you’re absent,” said Ben Smith, the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News and the Times’ current media columnist. At BuzzFeed, where I previously worked, “It always felt pretty urgent that I jump in there and engage and explain. It’s sort of like being present in the newsroom, but like many digital platforms, it’s 24/7,” Smith said.

As the Cotton op-ed controversy unfolded at the Times, Black employees organized a response to the op-ed in Slack. They would tweet a variation of, “Running this puts Black @nytimes staff in danger.” According to one member of the channel, the response came from just about 15 minutes of discussion among roughly 35 coworkers, and spread from there.

Slack takes over

When Slack burst onto the scene as the hot new enterprise tech company in 2013, news companies were among the early adopters, marking the latest effort by media companies to mimic Silicon Valley. The buzzy messaging platform ostensibly made it easier than email for companies to churn out stories, manage workflows, and communicate internally. At media companies, there are typically Slack channels for the entire newsroom, for instance, as well as for smaller groups, like the politics or culture desk or ad sales team. Mobile-friendly and sleek, Slack quickly replaced email and other instant messaging services and became most media companies’ digital assembly point. Unlike boring workflow tools like Trello or Asana, Slack was also fun. It blurred work and regular life, forging inside jokes and becoming the internal Twitter feed for media outlets. 

Alexis Madrigal, then the editor-in-chief of Fusion, told Nieman Lab in 2015 that the service “ends up becoming the fount of office culture.” It also came with a dark side: Slack could easily offer a new digital platform for presenteeism, bullying, time-wasting, and a reshaping of work-life balance that forced employees to be “online” around the clock. 

Slack is still all of those things years later. But it is also an even more important tool for media and a host of other industries as employees work from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Now a public company, Slack reported in June that more than 750,000 organizations use its free and paid service. 

Slack as a company is surely aware that in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, workers at media companies like the Times and Condé Nast have used their service to question executives on internal issues of race. At the Wall Street Journal, a group of staffers in Slack workshopped a letter to the editor-in-chief demanding changes in how the paper covers race and policing, according to a recent New York Times report. 

But if the company recognizes its role as a hub for media company accountability, Slack is not comfortable speaking about it publicly. “At its core, Slack helps teams improve their communication and operate with greater agility,” a company spokesperson said. “However, we don’t comment on our customers or individual use cases without their permission.”

To the #barricades channel

Slack’s rise in popularity coincided with another trend in digital media: unionization. Beginning with the former Gawker Media in 2015, a series of newsrooms have unionized in recent years, including Vice, HuffPost, Gimlet, New York Magazine, and BuzzFeed News.

Earlier this year, as HuffPost’s union negotiated a new contract, organizers took breaks from their meetings with management and quickly solicited feedback from the more than 100 members in the private union Slack channel. As a show of solidarity, members also changed their work Slack avatars to the union logo, meaning managers were confronted with the messaging constantly. “It seems like it might be a minor thing, but it was very cool,” said Nora Biette-Timmons, an editor at HuffPost on the union committee. 

Lowell Peterson, the executive director of the Writers Guild of America East, said that he first found Slack’s development as a unionization tool counterintuitive. Employees sometimes begin unionization talks by communicating with each other on the company Slack — not a separate Slack using, say, their Gmail accounts. That means the company can in theory read private messages.

“The old-school union organizing campaign is hiding under a locomotive in the dead of night so the boss doesn’t find out,” Peterson said. Now, however, communicating on Slack offers staffers a degree of safety. It is so conspicuous that retaliation for organizing would be obvious, Peterson said. “Ironically, it becomes a protection.”

For newsrooms like the Los Angeles Times, one topic recently has been the treatment of Black employees and people of color.  Erin Logan, a reporter at the LA Times and a union member, said that Slack has been a necessary tool for organizing. “Slack has enabled union members to all be in the same room at the same time. Those of us who are talking deeply care about the issues that we are putting before management, and it’s kind of hard for management to ignore.”

Culture change

The widespread discontent across the media industry will likely only grow as the economy continues its downward trajectory and the 2020 election approaches. Without physical newsrooms up and running, all of that will play out on Slack.

Employees, for their part, feel more empowered than ever. Their bosses are pledging to make changes. Executives have been forced out. Days after the Cotton op-ed, Times opinion editor James Bennet resigned amid the wave of internal pressure that moved to Twitter from, of course, Slack. On Tuesday, Times opinion writer Bari Weiss resigned from the paper. Weiss, a controversial figure who received more criticism for describing an internal civil war at the paper between “(mostly young) wokes” and “(mostly 40+) liberals,” claimed that she had been demeaned on company-wide Slack channels.

The fount of office culture is now the key mechanism for change. “I think the Times in particular, more than any other place I’ve worked, really depends on Slack to build a sense of community because our work can be very siloed,” said one Black Times staffer. “That kind of created the perfect storm for this kind of organizing.”

“It wasn’t an easy choice to make,” said Bennett. “We had already invested so much money and we didn’t get a lot of our deposits back. But we pivoted, hard.”

On the big day, an open air trolley will pick up Bennett and Kraus in front of their house and take them to an outdoor garden space where they will have their ceremony. From there, the trolley will take the couple to surprise locations that are meaningful to their relationship. 

Bennett and Kraus are among the hundreds of thousands of couples who planned to get married in 2020 — The Knot estimates that between March and August of this year one million weddings were scheduled —  who’ve had to reconfigure every facet of their nuptials. In doing so, they were able to make their wedding even more personalized than originally planned and that’s one trend industry experts expect to stick around long past the pandemic.  

“Couples want their weddings to be a reflection of who they are and they want to amplify the experience for their guests,” said Jeffra Trumpower, senior creative director at WeddingWire.

“Thinking outside of the box may not be a new concept for vendors and couples, but we’re definitely going to have to see that amplified to make it work in a time when your wedding might not be exactly what you think.” 

Over the last five months, couples and wedding vendors alike have set up new ways of working together to plan weddings that will likely continue, such as virtual consultations or at-home cake tastings, according to industry experts. The same can be said for the ceremony. For attendees, unable to travel in for the big day, watching over Zoom, will likely continue long past the pandemic. Some expect “minimonys,” a term coined by wedding planning website The Knot for a small ceremony with up to 10 to 15 attendees, according to The Knot’s editor in chief Kristen Maxwell Cooper, followed by a larger reception will continue, too. 

“Even prior to Covid-19, there were people who did smaller ceremonies with families and then bigger receptions,” said Maxwell Cooper, adding that this moment is making the trend even more popular. 

Emily Forrest, director of communications for wedding registry start-up Zola echoed that sentiment. “For a lot of couples, the opportunity to have a ceremony with just the people you are closest to and then at a later date have a reception of your dreams is quite enticing, regardless of the pandemic,” said Forrest. “This is almost making it OK to do that.” 

Couples will decide the future

The future of the wedding industry depends on the couples, according to vendors and industry observers, as those plunking down over $30,000 (The Knot’s latest Real Weddings study found that on average couples spent $33,900 on the engagement ring, ceremony and reception in 2019) will dictate when weddings return to pre-coronavirus levels, what those weddings will look like and how much they will spend going forward.

That said, many don’t believe the negative impact on the wedding industry will be long lasting as couples will likely want to celebrate en masse once coronavirus is contained. That means wedding budgets will likely remain high, per industry experts. That seems to be the case so far as 95% of U.S. couples surveyed this past May by WeddingWire are not planning on reducing their overall budget for weddings. 

Some believe weddings will return in the fall while others expect 2021 to be a huge year for the industry as many couples have postponed. In June, Zola polled 500 engaged couples in its Facebook Community who had planned weddings for June, July and August. Of those, 76% are still getting married in some way on their original date, that’s up from to the 30% with spring weddings who did the same, per Forrest.

A majority of the other couples, 22%, said they had made the decision to postpone entirely, while 2% said they are still waiting to decide. Of the 76% still getting married, “30% are having an intimate wedding now and hosting a larger reception later on, 27% are keeping their big day ‘exactly’ as planned (exactly in quotes because it is exact in so much as their venues will allow for, which varies by city / state) and 11% are going to be reducing their headcount by uninviting some guests.” 

Another change that experts believe will stay is the focus on health and safety at weddings. “In the past, it’s been assumed,” said Maxwell Cooper. “Now, let’s make sure we’re talking about this. We’ll see a return to more plated dinners. Most couples will forego buffets. It’s perceived as more sanitary to have a plated dinner. Hand sanitizer will be there either in creative ways, maybe in a welcome bag or on a silver platter that a member of the wait staff is carrying around. That’s the biggest thing we’ll see stick.” 

For vendors, uncertainty remains

For the photographers, caterers, hair stylists, florists and make up artists, among other vendors, there’s an overwhelming sense of uncertainty for what the future holds when it comes to weddings that can be difficult to grapple with. 

This year is a “wash” for Newport, Rhode Island-based makeup artist Allison Barbera who runs a company of 18 makeup artists. “Our revenue right now is down 60% compared to last year,” said Barbera, adding that 2020 was expected to be a huge year for vendors as couples tend to like to marry on even years and that the start of a decade is also typically more popular. “Every vendor I know had projected it to be huge.” 

“There’s definitely a concern that things will be different going forward,” said Barbera. “Will people have smaller weddings now? Will they elope instead of having weddings? The biggest theme is uncertainty.” 

“Many couples don’t want to spend tens of thousands to have their guests spread far apart and wearing masks, with no hugs and no dance floors, said Coli Michael, a wedding photographer who runs The Rhode Island Coalition of Wedding Vendors Facebook group. “It’s impersonal.” 

Michael continued: “In addition, most couples want to celebrate with their older family members, and a wedding with 150+ guests is going to be risky for elderly family members, at least for some time.” 

Futurist Faith Popcorn also believes that the traditional wedding will be “less important” going forward. “When people postpone the celebration after already being married in a ‘minimony,’ it’s almost like, ‘Why bother?’ with the big celebration later,” said Popcorn. “The profile of weddings will change. Also, even without a pandemic with a recession, will you put down $35,000 for a wedding? I don’t think so.” 

Still, there are already signs that love will ultimately triumph and that the industry will bounce back bigger than ever next year. Some anticipate more couples will start to get engaged soon (as some planned for the typical engagement season, which ends in February, were likely postponed due to coronavirus). Others are hearing from new couples for plans for next year. 

“We’re still booking new weddings for 2021,” said Barbera. “That shows us that couples are still planning so that tells me that there will hopefully be a season next year. The couples are really what dictates it.” 

Consequently, the number of full-time journalists joining newsletter
platform Substack has been growing steadily since the platform’s launch in 2017,
cofounder and chief operating officer Hamish McKenzie said. The same thing is
happening on newsletter platform Revue, according to its CEO, Martijn de
Kuijper; neither executive had hard data about how many of their users were
full-time reporters or editors.

But these kinds of newsletters also fit into a professional gray area. Most
media companies prohibit their reporters from doing freelance work that could
be seen as competitive with their day jobs, and managers in any talent-focused
industry have always worried about the talent building an audience their
employer doesn’t control and can’t monetize.      

“I think some editors look at this as, ‘Some reporters will
leave with my audience,’ but it was an amazing retention play,” said Alex
Kantrowitz, who launched a newsletter, “Tech Giant Update,” while working at
BuzzFeed News. Kantrowitz worked at BuzzFeed News for five years before leaving
this summer.

Kantrowitz created the first version of his newsletter using
Tinyletter about two years ago. Around the same time, BuzzFeed had announced internally
that it would help to promote the newsletters its talent had created. That move
“showed that BuzzFeed had my best interests in mind,” Kantrowitz said, so much
so that the promotion kept Kantrowitz at BuzzFeed News longer than he’d planned
to stay.    

Reporters have parlayed the success of their side newsletters into jobs in
the past. In 2016, Will Sommer launched a side newsletter about right wing
media and communication called Right Richter while he was working as an editor
at Washington City Paper. Two years and two jobs later, Sommer joined The Daily
Beast to cover the same topics. He brought the newsletter with him.

But even though side newsletters often focus on the same topics journalists report on at their day jobs, their reporters see them playing a complementary, rather than cannibalistic, role.

David Turner, who started the streaming music newsletter Penny Fractions as
a side project while he was covering the music industry for Gizmodo Media, said
his newsletter topics were often pitches that his Gizmodo editors had rejected.
 

Helen Lewis, an Atlantic staffer whose newsletter, the Bluestocking, has
been around since 2015, said she uses her newsletter to share rougher, less
developed thoughts with readers, as well as links to content she finds
interesting, much the way that many writers used to do with blogging.

“There was a [curatorial] function of blogs in the early 2010s that doesn’t
really exist anymore, and there isn’t a formal space for it in most
publications,” Lewis said. “But there’s still a kind of great hunger for
author-led curation.”

The Bluestocking also allows Lewis to have deeper conversations with readers
than a platform like Twitter might, which gives her an opportunity to sharpen
her thinking in ways that help future Atlantic pieces, she added.

Managers hoping to capture all the upside of newsletters without the risks,
have begun testing out ways to give their reporters newsletters that they
control. McKenzie said Substack is having conversations with numerous media
companies about how they can use his company’s product to build newsletters for
their reporters or organizations; in late May, for example, four Wall Street
Journal staffers debuted a collaborative newsletter on Substack, called Elevate
with clear WSJ branding.

But even if side newsletters present pros and cons to editors, many reporters see them as a tool that no reasonable editor could take away.

“It’s like telling a reporter they can’t have a Twitter account,” said Steve O’Hear, a reporter at TechCrunch who’s maintained a newsletter, In the Know, since 2016.