Private equity owners of news outlet pressure staff to write more after coworker’s death

In a recent email to staff, an editor of an online news outlet — writing on behalf of the site's private equity ownership — pressured employees to increase their output to "offset" the loss in productivity from a colleague's sudden death.

Semafor reported Wednesday that employees at The Root, which focuses on content geared toward Black audiences, were shocked to read an email from deputy editor Dustin Seibert in response to the death of writer Stephanie Holland. Seibert relayed information from a memo by the site's owner, G/O Media, in which writers were pushed to write at least "four trending news stories daily."

"This will bring us closer to standards expected of daily writers across the industry, as well as help us offset the tragic loss of Stephanie," Seibert wrote in the email. "If you are working on a slideshow, you are still only expected to provide two more trending stories that day."

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Semafor media reporter Max Tani noted that the G/O Media memo in question outlined "some new approaches to our workflow in the interest of maintaining both the quality of work that our readers are used to as well as achieving the metrics that our superiors expect from us." However, an unnamed company spokesperson countered to Tani that the memo was taken "out of context" and "included reasonable, industry standard goals that had been already communicated to the staff weeks ago."

G/O Media was formed in 2019 after the private equity firm Great Hill Partners purchased Univision's Gizmodo Media Group (which included sites like Gizmodo, Jezebel, Deadspin, The Root and Kotaku, among others) and The Onion's family of websites (The Onion, the A.V. Club, Clickhole and The Takeout). Since its formation, the company and its CEO, Jim Spanfeller, have been heavily criticized for its shuttering of websites with committed fanbases like Jezebel and Deadspin and its laying off of employees to drive higher profits. Semafor additionally reported that G/O's decision to use artificial intelligence to write website copy was met with an icy reception.

Holland passed away on December 31, 2024 at the age of 47. An article about her on The Root's website described her as "a notable reporter who left an invaluable impression on those she spoke to" with a "funny and quirky personality."

"I am lucky and blessed to have worked so closely with her for the time that I did," The Root's Shanelle Genai wrote. "She was more talented than she gave herself credit for, more patient than she realized, and more quick-witted than she let on."

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Click here to read Tani's full report in Semafor.