Self magazine is gone. A staffer speaks out.

This week was supposed to be a light-touch soft launch for La Fronde, but that plan didn't last long. Disney and Condé Nast both announced sweeping layoffs last week, and my inbox filled up fast. I appreciate everyone who reached out with intel. Please keep it coming. You can email me at [email protected] or hit me up on Signal if you want to keep things confidential.

For today's preview issue, I spoke with former Self staffer Melanie Curry, who was among those affected by Condé's cuts. She found out the same way the rest of us did — through CEO Roger Lynch's company-wide memo. And she found out while she was about to leave for a family vacation in Orlando.

There's no good time to tell someone they no longer have a job. But really, Condé? Not even a personal email first?

We also have a preview of our Thursday column Maxed Out, where we ask some of our favorite women in media to share what they're reading, watching, and listening to — with a twist. Everyone has to come clean about their screen time. I have no idea what mine is right now, and I'm dreading the moment I have to find out.

Since this is a preview, you're only getting a taste of what a full Thursday issue will look like — columns like Hot Jobs and more will be in every issue starting next week.

Thursday emails are free. Tuesdays are for paid members only—and the next Tuesday send is a big one. We're sitting down with Hannah Williams, whose social media interview series Salary Transparent Street was recently acquired by NowThis in a seven-figure deal. Seems like a dream, right? But when we talked, I quickly learned that a seven-figure deal comes with some real fine print. Become a member here so you don't miss it.

xoxo,

Stephanie

Introducing Maxed Out — our Thursday column where we chat with some of our favorite women in media about how much time they're spending on their phones and what they're reading, watching and listening to online.

We're getting a bit meta with today's column and using this space to introduce ourselves before we launch on Tuesday, April 28. New interviews drop every Thursday.

Tell me about what you’re working on now — what does your day to day look like and how long have you been doing it?

I’m going all in on La Fronde! It’s a lot of work, but also one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever done in my career. It’s not my first time launching a publication of my own. In 2012, while living in D.C., I started the music blog D.C. Music Download where I covered the city’s local music scene. I built the blog up to a fully-staffed editorial team and music festival. I was doing that all night while still working at National Geographic as a data analyst during the day. That project helped me land a job writing for The Washington Post Express and The Washington Post’s Going Out Guide. Essentially D.C. Music Download jump started my journalism career. 

I’ve held senior positions at EqualPride as Vice President of Audience, and before that was the head of global audience development for several Condé brands including GQ, Teen Vogue, Them and Pitchfork. I’ve also authored a few books on D.C.’s punk music history since I’ve left The Post and freelanced for places like Rolling Stone. 

What's your average phone screen time for a given week? Are you surprised by that number?

Not as high as I thought: 6 hours and 43 minutes. I’ve been trying to limit my social media to no more than 1 hour a day per app. It’s a little easier said than done when a lot of my work involves reporting on the news of the day. But I’ve made a breakthrough in at least cutting down my TikTok and Instagram Reels time from three hours a day to only one. 

Where do you spend your daily screen time online? What are your go-to spots on the Internet that you think people should know and why?

I think I read too much media news, to be honest. There are a lot of good writers in the space that I read pretty regularly. I read Status and Puck’s Line Sheet pretty much every day. Those two newsletters are my favorites when I want to get the most comprehensive read on what’s happening in the world. Breaker is a fun media news read, too. I love how Lachlan Cartwright is able to take what could be a dull news story and spin it into something that’s voicey, a bit snarky, and interesting to read. It just seems like he truly loves what he does and that comes through in the writing. Semafor’s Sunday newsletter is also great and Max Tani gets some really good scoops. 

Other newsletters I like to read that I think have a really great, distinctive voice: The new Gourmet magazine (even though I’m not that big into the food scene, the writing still is fun to read — and that’s a real hard thing to pull off!), Feed Me by Emily Sundberg, Back Row by Amy Odell (and no one comes close to getting the best scoops on Anna Wintour like she does), Opulent Tips by Rachel Tashjian, Hung Up by Hunter Harris. There’s probably more I’m accidentally forgetting!

I still keep up with what’s going on in indie music. As a life long Bikini Kill fan, I absolutely adore Kathleen Hanna and I’ll subscribe to anything she does. She has a Substack called Future Windows. 

I also love reading international fashion magazines. My favs are Japanese fashion mags like Popeye (covering men’s fashion trends) and ViVi (women’s wear). I like these mostly for design inspiration.

Brittney McNamara, Editor of La Fronde

Tell me about what you’re working on now — what does your day to day look like and how long have you been doing it?

I've been freelancing since last November, when I was part of a big round of layoffs at Teen Vogue. I'd been at the magazine for almost 9 years, so I was pretty terrified about the prospect of going from an in-house job to the uncertainty of freelancing. Luckily, I've been booked and busy and I'm really enjoying the excitement of doing new things. 

My main gig is at Playboy, where I'm leading the relaunch of their digital publishing. Phillip Picardi, my old Teen Vogue boss, pulled me on board to revitalize the website's editorial content, with a heavy focus on Playboy's legacy of prestige reporting. This is a contract role, but it's essentially a full-time job. A typical day includes editing timely and longer lead stories for the website, managing the editorial calendar, combing the archives for relevant stories to resurface, and writing the occasional story.

I'm also working with Paula James Martinez on a forthcoming teen magazine called Cuqui. The goal is to bring back teen culture, offering Gen Alpha girls who are sick of the algorithm something tangible and cool. I talk with her a few times a week about all the moving parts and it's always the most fun. And, I'm here! Editing Stephanie's brilliant stories to help create a space by, for, and about women in media.

That's all to say that my days are very busy and rarely the same—which is as much fun as it is overwhelming.

What's your average phone screen time for a given week? Are you surprised by that number?

My average daily screen time is about 12 hours across devices, which are my phone and laptop. My absolutely toxic trait is that I cannot sleep without the TV on, so if I wake up in the middle of the night after the sleep timer has gone off, I'll put a show on my phone so it doesn't disturb my husband. That happens often, so many days (today included) my screen time is inflated by Hulu's autoplay feature, playing shows long after I've fallen back asleep. I also have a bone to pick with Google Maps. Using my phone's GPS should not count toward screen time as it's not interactive!

But really, this is me just trying to explain away my way-too-high screen time. I should probably put my phone down now...

Where do you spend your daily screen time online? What are your go-to spots on the Internet that you think people should know and why?

Most of my (actual) daily screen time is spent on Slack and Google Chrome. Deeply unexciting! But much more exciting—and please hear me out—is Facebook. 

So many people in my life have abandoned Facebook, and for good and noble reasons. I fully understand why so many millennials fled the platform, and I know there's no one younger than 30 on the newsfeed. But I started my career in local news, which means I'm obsessed with local gossip. Let me tell you something: the neighborhood gossip you find on Facebook is unrivaled. 

I am part of my town's Facebook group, and when the admins allow me in, I join surrounding towns' groups. I'm still in community groups from other cities and towns where I've lived, and even one for the building where my friend's boyfriend lived in Brooklyn (it's particularly juicy). I'm in homesteading groups, though I am not a homesteader. And in groups for Catholic moms, though I am not Catholic, or religious at all. I'm in it for the drama, and I'll never leave. 

When I got laid off from The Washington Post Express (RIP) in 2019, the HR team herded me and the rest of the staff into a conference room where we were told the paper was getting axed. Before I could text or call anyone, the world already knew. Little did I know that The Post had a press release ready to go the night before, timed to publish the moment we got the news. They had given The Post’s media reporter at the time a 24-hour embargo on our fate.

That, my friends, is how I ended up getting outscooped on my own layoff. It's a weird feeling to not have control over your own story, but that's essentially what happened to Melanie Curry — except worse.

Last Thursday, Melanie, who was the Associate Manager of Audience Development at Self and Allure, had a noon flight to Florida. It was the first day of a family vacation. When she saw the email from Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, she knew what it meant — this was her third layoff in three years. She had only been at the company for 10 months.

By the time she landed in Orlando, HR was telling Melanie about her severance package on a call she took from a car, hotspot on, bags in the trunk.

Last week, Condé Nast shuttered Self entirely, eliminating its full staff as part of a broader round of cuts across the company. That’s part of what Roger’s email said, and it came before Melanie ever got wind that her job was in jeopardy. The Condé union released a statement saying the cuts disproportionately impacted women and people of color — and Melanie would agree.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me a little bit about your role at Self and Allure. You were an associate audience development manager — a job where you're wearing a lot of hats.

This was my first audience development role. It was a new career position for me, but I really loved it. It's hard to say what I did because my work spanned so many different areas. I did social analytics, social programming, content strategy, as well as newsletter strategy. For Self specifically, a big focus was retaining and growing our daily newsletter subscriber list. That meant programming our newsletter and digging into which content types our readers were clicking on most. I also oversaw our sweepstakes initiative with external partners and reported on how Self franchises were performing, like the Olympics. It was very project-based.

Before the announcement happened, did you see any warning signs that Self was about to shut down?

No, I didn't have any hints that a layoff was coming. I was completely blindsided. In [an email Roger sent Condé staff in February], he was talking about Self expanding into licensing programs, and we even had a meeting after that email where our editor-in-chief Jessica Cruel was explaining different avenues she was taking to make sure the brand was successful and profitable.

From my aud dev perspective, it's very hard for a brand like Self to make noise in this current internet landscape. It would probably require licensing or external events. But there still seemed to be a commitment to making the brand work. I was completely blindsided — not just that we were getting laid off, but that they were shutting the brand down entirely. The majority of people on Self were new hires. How can you make a brand profitable when you didn't have a full team until January? They had just hired a new executive editor. A new fitness editor. A senior health editor. We had revised our content strategy in late fall.

Okay, walk me through the morning. Because finding out via a CEO all-staff email while you're packing for vacation is a lot.

It was my first day of vacation. I woke up early because my flight was at noon. I was about to get in the shower and I saw the email from Roger — and that's when I knew. I've been laid off before, so I was telling myself in the shower, "It's not a done deal until you get the email from HR." And then I got out of the shower, and there it was — the email from HR and our editor in chief. 

We were all blindsided that Self was shutting down. We had just released our Nia Long cover. And in his email, Roger said the decision was based on [strategy laid out in] his February note. It's April. That's two months. I got the feeling that our editor in chief was championing the brand and was not happy about the decision to shut it down — that she thought we had more time to figure things out.

So what did you do after you heard the news?

We got two meetings. First, an all hands for everyone on Self, including people who worked cross-brand. My flight was during the time they'd scheduled the HR meeting, so we pushed it to later in the afternoon. I cried while I packed. My roommate helped me. I was on the plane scrolling Slack, texting people, trying to figure out what was happening. And then once I landed, I had to connect my laptop to my hotspot and do the call from the car. That's how I found out I was laid off — on a Florida highway.

The Condé union released a statement saying these cuts hit women and people of color hardest. You were there — does that match what you saw?

I was on a diversity committee at Condé. We were actually going to meet with management about the decrease in staff diversity — and about what the erasure of Teen Vogue and Them means for diversity coverage. To be transparent: I'm Black, and a lot of people on Self were also Black. And when I look at Allure now, there isn't much Black representation left. If we're doing a story on the best mascaras, editors will demonstrate the utility and benefits of the product on camera. One thing I always felt passionately about was volunteering myself for UGC [user generated content] — because if I didn't, there would be only one or two Black people on the site. You want your coverage to be inclusive. But now I'm laid off, and there's only a few other editors to do this.

You said this was your third layoff in three years. Did this one change how you think about working in journalism?

To be transparent, I am a little more anxious this time. I turn 26 in July, which is when I get kicked off my mom's insurance. That's the thing that's really freaking me out. I kind of 100% want to pivot out of editorial. Will I love another editorial role? Yes. Am I still applying for audience development and social media roles? Yes. But I need to be realistic — getting laid off three times in three years is not stable. My passion for journalism, my passion for this industry, is just gone. If that means I need to go work in FinTech or at a food company, then so be it. I just need to get out.

What does the next chapter look like?

I'm trying to land a full-time role. In the meantime, I've been freelancing and have reached out to contacts I've worked with over the past few years. I'm just looking for ways to supplement my income while I'm job hunting.

Last one, and it might be a loaded question: when media companies fold the way Self did — which is becoming a trend — who should be held responsible?

I don't think it's one person. It would be easy to just blame Roger or Anna or whoever signed off on the decision. But I think it's bigger than that. What's wild to me is that in the same email where Roger announced the shutdown, he mentioned that Self and Glamour [in Germany, Spain and Mexico, plus Wired in Italy] together represent only about 1% of Condé's total revenue. So by his own math, the overall business is fine. And if the overall business is fine, why not invest in the part that isn't profitable yet and give it time to work?

And more broadly — we keep measuring the health of the economy by what's happening on Wall Street. But I think a better measure is whether people are okay. And people are not okay. It's not normal for people to get laid off over and over again. It shouldn't be normal.

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