In the wake of the New York Times story on Vice’s “degrading and uncomfortable” workplace culture, in which more than two dozen women reported that they had been subjected to, or witnessed, sexual misconduct at the office, Vice founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alviapoligzed: “Listening to our employees over the past year, the truth is inescapable: from the top down, we have failed as a company to create a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone, especially women, can feel respected and thrive. Cultural elements from our past, dysfunction and mismanagement were allowed to flourish unchecked. . . . It happened on our watch, and ultimately we let far too many people down. We are truly sorry for this.”
The Library of Congress has given up on their quixotic plan to archive all tweets. Beginning next year, the LOC will save tweets on “a very selective basis.”
On the New Yorker’s Radio Hour podcast, David Remnick talks to A. G. Sulzberger, the Times’s new publisher. The job won’t be an easy one, as Sulzberger admits: “It’s definitely an honor and a privilege—and a daunting one. Maybe the best note I got from a colleague was, “Congratulations/Sorry!” Which I think is probably a statement of the pretty profound challenges facing journalism in this moment.”
The Times reports on unionization efforts at digital media companies. Vox Media employees announced that they were planning to form a union last month, following successful labor-organizing campaigns at companies such as Vice Media, ThinkProgress, and HuffPost. The article quotes Kim Kelly, a reporter for a Vice music site, Noisey, about the decision to unionize: “People were fed up and broke and anxious about the future, and the union gave them a way to take control and force things to change.”
Literary Hub recaps the best reviewed fiction and nonfiction of the year.
