One thing I realized during my chat with Kara McGrath about accepting gifts at work was how wildly different everyone’s opinions are about this. I guess my prudence comes from my time at The Post, where even now I’d feel guilty about taking a can of Coke from the fridge if a source offered me one. And then there are people like Randall Lane of Forbes, who didn’t even blink twice before taking $6 million under the table. Truly, the most revealing part of that NYT scoop for me was that he decided to use his millions to manifest his dream of making an avant-garde Benjamin Franklin rock musical with these hilariously awful AI images to boot. 

Today’s newsletter features my Maxed Out interview with Teen Vogue’s former editor in chief Versha Sharma. This was my first proper catch-up with her in a long while, since before Teen Vogue was folded into Vogue last fall. We talked about what it was like leading the team during a tumultuous time for the brand (she was hired right after Alexi McCammond’s whirlwind exit in 2021) and her next moves post-Condé.

Also: Former ABC News president Kim Godwin steps back into the spotlight, some Condé reshuffling and Alex Cooper’s Unwell drink line goes under, in Seen and Heard. And I’ve got details on the current job drama happening at Nat Geo, as a bonus scoop for all the paid La Fronde members out there

xoxo,

Stephanie

I started at Teen Vogue around the time Versha joined as editor in chief in May 2021, and it kind of felt like moving into a new town after it was rattled by an earthquake. Versha had the herculean task of building trust with a team who was still reeling from the fallout of Alexi’s appointment and dramatic exit a couple months earlier, after her past tweets containing racial slurs were brought to light. And because Condé Nast was still under COVID lockdown, she had to do this all remotely. 

Still, even with those hurdles in the way, Versha and the team went on to produce some of the most fearless political coverage in the building. I talked with Versha about running Teen Vogue during that rebuilding period, the reorg that happened last fall, and how her views about work have changed since leaving her post. And of course, in Maxed Out fashion, we touched on some of her favorite newsletters and books on her radar.

I met you right as you came in to be editor-in-chief, and I remember that was a real time of transition. What was it like trying to boost morale back up on the team while also getting up to speed on a new job?

And it was just one year into COVID, so it was taking on a big leadership role in a remote workplace, which was wild in and of itself. The whole thing.

Right, yeah, and we all had to work remotely, which was hard enough as a new person.

But stepping into this role, it was obviously hugely exciting because this is a dream job, but it was a very sensitive, challenging time because of everything that had happened with the appointment, and basically the withdrawal of Alexi McCammond as editor-in-chief. I knew coming in that the existing Teen Vogue team had expressed their disappointment and discontent with Condé Nast leadership because of the way all of that was handled. So I knew that was the number one thing I had to do — basically rebuild trust with the team, and then rebuild trust with our audience. That was clear to me from the beginning, just from following the news cycle, but also in my interviews. I did 13 rounds of interviews.

Oh my gosh. Is that standard for an editor-in-chief role?

I think it might be now, honestly, but I think Condé was figuring it out as they went, because I think they wanted to do right by the Teen Vogue team and audience, having seen what happened. So they took the interview process very seriously — to be a finalist and then get the job, I had a lot of conversations with a lot of high-level people, including Anna [Wintour] twice, including Roger Lynch, the CEO — basically the entire executive leadership team of Condé Nast. I interviewed with all of them, and then some other editors-in-chief as well. So the interview process was intense. I knew coming in that Condé was taking it seriously, that the Teen Vogue team wanted to be taken seriously and felt like maybe they hadn't been. So that was really important to me, because I knew I was inheriting a team that had just been through drama and controversy — I knew it was a young team, I knew it was a diverse team. That's been a big focus of mine for almost my whole career, working with younger journalists and younger audiences, so I at least had that experience going in, wanting to be a good manager and a good leader.

With an editor-in-chief job, what was the most surprising thing you realized when you stepped into the role?

I didn't realize that editors-in-chief in the 2020s at Condé Nast are also the publishers of their own magazine. Condé used to have publishers — an editor-in-chief used to have a publishing partner, somebody who would handle the sales, the marketing, the monetization, the brand building, and an editor-in-chief would always be a brand builder too, of course. But in the 2020s at Condé, it's one person who's responsible for all of that for the magazine. So my editorial instincts, my experience in journalism — I'm 100% rock solid confident in those things. But I didn't know how much of the job, and how much of my time, would be spent having to advocate for Teen Vogue both internally and externally in terms of resources, monetization, revenue, because that's not editorial. That's the job I was asked to do.

You're wearing all the hats, basically.

Yeah, you're CEO — we're basically little CEOs of our own publications within Condé Nast. It was definitely more than just editor-in-chief, which was already a big job in and of itself.

One thing I really appreciated was that you also advocated for the team, and the coverage you would write, specifically the politics coverage. It felt very distinct from what anybody else was doing in the building at the time. How easy or hard was it to navigate telling those stories within the confines of Condé, which historically hasn't really touched politics that way, up until Teen Vogue started doing that?

I think that's an interesting question. That approach to politics at Teen Vogue predated me — it really started in 2016 with the first Trump election and administration, and I'm sure you're familiar with Lauren Duca's op-ed, and how it went viral, and her fight with Tucker Carlson on air. That's when I started paying attention to Teen Vogue again, I was like, oh, they're doing really cool stuff over there. So I was honored to step in and carry that mantle forward to what it looks like now. It was challenging, for sure. I think it was interesting when Anna offered me the job, because I'm a political journalist by trade — I'm not a fashion editor or fashion journalist, that wasn't my first professional experience in journalism. So handing the job to somebody with that background is tacitly saying, keep doing this coverage, because we know your audience appreciates it, we know it resonates with them, we know it's part of the brand. I was really excited about that. I'll be honest and say it got more challenging as time went on, for multiple reasons, but nothing was as challenging as dealing with our Israel-Palestine coverage and the responses we got to that, both internally and externally. The last two years of my job, from October 2023 to when I was laid off, were made very difficult specifically because of that coverage.

That's around the time I left Teen Vogue. Tell me more about the reactions you were getting, both internally and externally.

It was a huge controversy. Everything we saw happening in the media industry and the entertainment industry, and basically our own social media feeds writ large, was happening to Teen Vogue as well — which, as many editors have said to me, when you're talking about Israel and Palestine, you can't win. Every story, headline, angle, framing you do is probably going to upset somebody, because it's such a nuanced, difficult issue that's sensitive for a lot of different groups for a lot of different reasons. I understand that. 

To me, we had a very clear editorial directive at Teen Vogue, which is to reflect how young people feel about Israel and Palestine — which is that the majority of them believe the Israeli government has been committing a genocide. Our social media feeds were getting flooded with dead children and nonstop airstrikes, and what we saw start building on college campuses in the fall of 2023, which became a huge national issue that got front-page coverage in the New York Times and elsewhere — to me, I was like, what other publication besides Teen Vogue, the voice of students and teens, should be covering this from that perspective? Because you'd look at a New York Times article and it would be about drama at Harvard or Columbia, and it would be all about the president and the administration, both in the White House and at that university, and then maybe you'd hear from the students. The students are the core of this. So we had them write for us, we had them photograph for us, we covered those protests as much as I believe they should be covered. Some people thought the work we were doing was great and much needed. Some people thought it was biased, that it was anti-Israeli. So those were the kinds of conversations we had to navigate, and it was really hard.

How were you keeping your sanity throughout that?

It's really hard. But I will say — this is dystopian, but it's true — my experience at NowThis covering school shootings, and major humanitarian crises, is what taught me how important it is to take care of my newsroom and take care of my staff. So I would constantly check in with my staff and be like, are you okay covering this? Do you need a break, do you need to talk, do you need to walk around the block, do you need to maybe do fun, uplifting culture stories for two weeks and take a break from this? That's what's most important to me. We were constantly checking in with each other in that way, and I think that helped.

You touched on this a little, but talk to me — Teen Vogue got folded into Vogue earlier last fall, and I know that was probably a very challenging moment for you as a leader, having to navigate your own next moves while also being there for your team through that transition. What was that day like for you?

It was a bad day. It was a surprise for me — I didn't know it was coming. There were two ways I got through it. One was focusing on my team and making sure they were okay, because it wasn't just me, it was seven of my team members, the majority of my team, for many of whom this was their first job in media, or their first full-time job at a publication. What a horrible way to lose a first job. But the overwhelming support we received — internally and externally — for the work we were doing and the coverage we were doing just blew me away, and that was amazing. That helped me deal with all of it, that helped me understand, okay, people saw what we were doing and appreciated it. I'm honestly still processing it — it's August, it's eight, nine months later, and I still feel sad about things I wanted to do with that team that I never got to do. But what got me through it was knowing our work stood the test of time, and people appreciated it.

Did that experience change how you thought about your career? Talking to a lot of women who've been part of layoffs, myself included, it kind of fundamentally changes how you see work. How was that for you afterward?

Yeah, that's a great question, and it did fundamentally change things for me, too. I think it also came at such an interesting time in the creator economy, which we're both very much aware of. A couple things I'd say — one, I'm a newish mom, I have a three-year-old daughter, so one of the most immediate impacts was I got to spend more time with her, got to go to her 4:30 p.m. weekday ballet classes, got to see her throughout the day. That immediately was a silver lining. I started to see the benefits of a more flexible schedule, of not having a full-time job. But I also think it came at this interesting time for the media industry, in that the layoffs are constant, more journalists than ever are going independent, the creator economy is on the rise, and brands and publishers are finally starting to take that seriously for the most part. I think it's exciting in that way — there's a huge opportunity. This outpouring of support I'm talking about, and it does include seeing you launch La Fronde, the work with Brittney, hearing about your subscribers and your growth — it was so exciting, and honestly gave me confidence to think, ‘okay, maybe I should launch something of my own, maybe I can really do this on my own, too.’ It doesn't have to be within the confines of a Condé Nast, or a Hearst, or a Vox Media. That's really liberating, that's really exciting. I am grateful I had early support from other journalists who were laid off from their corporate media jobs, like Karen Attiah at The Washington Post, or Mehdi Hasan at MSNBC, who've both gone on to launch and grow wildly successful independent publications. Both of them, a couple weeks after it happened, said, “in six months you're gonna feel like this was the best thing that ever happened to you.” I'm not at that point — I'll be honest, I don't know that I believe it yet — but it's nice to hear.

How's everything been going with Fine Lines? I was excited to hear about it — we talked about it in La Fronde, but how is it doing your own thing compared to working within the confines of a legacy newsroom?

It's really exciting. The first post I published, or maybe even the first two, I was like — this sounds so basic, but from what we're used to — I'm like, wait, I really don't have to show this to anybody first? There is something mind-blowing about that freedom. That is a real freedom, super exciting. I have a million ideas I haven't gotten a chance to write yet, I'm definitely just starting — it's only been a couple weeks, so I'm excited to see where this takes me. It's great to be writing again. Feedback so far has been so nice. As much as I loved my job at Teen Vogue, because of the management and the revenue and all the other parts of it, I never got to write as much as I wanted to. I'll always think like an editor — I still miss commissioning articles, I miss being able to say, ‘hey, go do this photo shoot.’ Those ideas are all coming, and I'm hopeful I'll get there. But I'm not there right now.

Besides your own newsletter, what other newsletters are on your radar? Curious to hear about your recommendations for Maxed Out! Can also be non-newsletter related too, books, podcasts, really anything goes. 

Okay, great. I guess I'll shout out that my husband has a new book — I did some editing for him. It's called the United States of Oligarchy. It was published August 4. It could not be more relevant — a book about how we are now living in an oligarchy in America. It's fascinating, it's so well done. It's written in a way that anybody can understand, which I think is really important, because basically I think we all need to educate ourselves on what oligarchy is and what it means that we're actually living in one now.

More timely than ever. Oh, I forgot to mention: we ask everyone to share their daily average screen time they spend on their phones for this series. What’s yours?

I'd say six hours.

Okay, yeah, so that's around the average. 

Okay, cool. I'm looking at what apps I actually spend the most time on. I know I spend a lot of time on Instagram, still. There are so many publications and newsletters I follow and would like to shout out. I'm a fan of Feed Me, I like what Emily Sundberg has done with that, I'm impressed with the way she's grown it. I really enjoy Jessica Valenti's Abortion, Every Day. She's a great feminist writer who's been running it, I want to say since Roe was overturned, basically to cover the amount of reproductive rights news in the U.S., which is insane. I was so pleased to read about Broccoli magazine in a La Fronde issue —

They're great.

I signed up for Broccoli's newsletter, and they now publish a secondhand fashion magazine called Mildew, which I just got the print copy of last week, and I loved that. Zeteo is a big one that I read — speaking of Mehdi Hasan earlier, I think Zeteo is probably doing the best current-events coverage out there. It's a lot of Substack, a lot of newsletters, a lot of Instagram, a good amount of reels and video. I'm trying to think if there's anything else I should shout out.

Oh yeah, no minimum — whatever, it's more the ones you truly endorse, the Versha stamp of approval.

Okay, I really like Embedded, by Kate Lindsay. I think she's very funny, I love her sense of humor. Here's another one I'll shout out because I think more people should know about it — it's called Hot Tip. Do you know Hot Tip?

I don't!

It's a news and culture Substack written by Alex Friedman. Anyway, it's very funny — I love newsletters with personality and voice, but that stay informative. That's a great one for that.

What we’re seeing and hearing around the industry.

A new wealth newsletter. A fresh off the press Seen and Heard (just as I was about to press send on this newsletter, which is why it’s kind of late, sorry!): URL Media, whose founder we profiled a few weeks ago, has just launched a new newsletter and content vertical focused on money and finance.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at this conference. I flew to the comment section when I saw Kim Godwin’s cheeky Instagram post about revealing what went down behind the scenes during her time at ABC News. The New York Times called her tenure as president of the network from 2021 to 2024 “rocky.” She’s kept a low profile since then but is planning to make a big appearance tomorrow at an Atlanta panel event that centers on “honest conversations our industry needs most,” as Breaker first reported. If anyone is going to this, please let me know what comes of it.

Alex Cooper’s beverage business goes under. Even Alex Cooper, being the entrepreneurial juggernaut that she is, wasn’t able to quite crack the celebrity beverage market. According to Bloomberg, the drink line will cease operations this fall. To be real, the selling point for the Unwell branded drinks was a little flimsy to begin with — a hybrid of an energy drink with some health benefits (? I’m putting a hard question mark here because that all could totally be bullshit) didn’t feel all that distinctive or groundbreaking. Given that her company was valued at a cool $500 million, I think it’s safe to say that she’s going to do just fine. 

Condé’s musical chairs. I’ve noticed that Condé has been on a hiring streak these last few weeks and posted a bunch of revenue and commerce-related jobs. Indeed, there has been some reshuffling going on internally within the department, led by chief revenue officer Elizabeth Herbst-Brady. I first reported in June that Condé’s global SVP of revenue marketing, Sophia Zhang, departed the company after a year on the job, and yesterday Puck’s Malique Morris reported that global digital chief business officer Deborah Brett has also exited the company. I did hear rumblings from people there a few weeks ago that she was leaving, and a lot of current and former Condé folks (myself included) were pretty surprised to hear the news. From the inside, it seemed like she had a pretty tight relationship with Elizabeth and planned to be at Condé for the long haul.

Filing this under ‘I wish I would have thought of this story pitch.’ Fast Company published a wonderful profile the other day that interviewed 21 Black women on how they’ve bounced back after being pushed out of their jobs. The story also illuminated how so many women are ditching a traditional 9-5 to start their own businesses. Black women continue to be disproportionately impacted by layoffs and that storyline should be covered — but it is nice to see a piece that touches on the resilience the women who were interviewed for the story have.