The Dianna Russini double standard

We all just need a break!

That seems to be the resounding takeaway from our story this week about women who are fed up and opting out of the media job search. A lot of you emailed me with your own frustrating experiences of looking for work (I’m still enraged for the person who said they had to go through a 12-step interview process only to get ghosted, that’s just cruel). So, if you’re in the same boat and feeling like the market is broken, you’re not alone: the system is truly terrible. 

Today’s free newsletter brings another Maxed Out interview with the Boston Globe’s breakout star Emily Sweeney. She got a new job at the Globe after her video about a home invasion went viral a few months ago, and I talked to her about how it’s all going, plus what she’s reading, watching and listening to online. Then, I have a lot of thoughts about this Dianna Russini story in the New York Times, someone gets busted for fake Vanity Fair Oscar Party tickets, and more.

xoxo,

Stephanie

I knew Emily Sweeney was going to be a star the moment I saw her video about a Boston-area home invasion in March. And it seems like everyone else did too: the video racked up more than 1.2M views and got nearly 100,000 likes on TikTok in just a few hours. The whole world was introduced to this hyper-local story — and Emily’s knack for telling crime stories with a bravado and uniqueness that can be compared to other legendary on-air reporters like Dateline NBC’s Keith Morrison. 

The people wanted more screen time with Emily and the Boston Globe delivered: shortly after that video took off, she was promoted to be the newsroom’s social video journalist. Besides the crime beat, she now gets to cover local stories of all kinds, including the World Cup games, an uptick in ticks, and the new dirty sodas from Boston’s unofficial-official coffee shop of choice, Dunkin. She does it all while wearing an impeccable track suit (she aims to wear a different one in each video) and with a distinguishable Dorchester accent. 

Emily and the Boston Globe’s success is a blueprint for how newsrooms can get people to care about the news. It just takes the right person and the right format to get everyone to pay attention. In Emily’s case, that attention is international: fans from as far as Australia have reached out saying how they’re now dialed into what’s going on in Boston. Myself included.

Emily talked to me about how the new job is going and, in Maxed Out tradition, shares her media diet. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Take me back to the 24 hours after your home invasion video dropped. Were you watching the numbers in real time? What was that like?

It was a crazy story to begin with. The story was about a mansion getting robbed by masked intruders. I knew it would get a lot of hits, and I wasn't surprised when they tapped me on the shoulder to do a video. But I had zero idea that it would ever go viral like it did. I think it was that night, I was looking at the views — 700,000, 800,000 — the numbers were just ticking, and I was like, all right, this doesn't seem normal. And then seeing the comments and everything — so many people commenting about my accent and what I was wearing. My editors were like, do you want to do another video? And I was like, oh my god, yes, absolutely. I'll read headlines, I'll do whatever. And that's what we started doing, and it's just kind of built from there.

And the comments spread way beyond Boston, you've been getting messages from people all over the world.

Yeah, it's definitely been international. I've gotten messages from people from Ireland, Guam, Australia, all different states across the country. There's a lot of regular people who are commenting now and following Boston news. It’s just really exciting to see people interested in news coming from a legacy media organization. And getting stopped in the street as much as I do now, so many people yelling out "the Globe" — who would have thunk? If you had told me even five months ago that this was happening, I'd be like, what?

I think you’ve got a great blueprint for how other legacy newsrooms should think about growing their audience. I know you were at the Globe for a while before this video blew up. What were you covering then?

ES: Before, my focus was print. I covered a lot of breaking news. I still write the Globe's Cold Case Files series, which is about unsolved murders. I have a weekly column called Blotter Tales, that's all about funny police log incidents and animal rescues and stuff. But now instead of just covering breaking news in print, the focus is all video. I'm out and about doing man on the street interviews, which I love, and doing a lot more feature stories. We did one where a meteorite came down and shook some homes, and it fell into Cape Cod Bay. So we got sent out and were on a boat trying to magnet fish — which we would have hit in the lottery if we actually got something. But I was out there with the Globe's meteorologist, and it's a story I would not have been assigned a few months ago.

What's a story you're dying to cover that you haven’t yet? 

Two things I really, really want to cover: unsolved murders — we just finished doing our first cold case video in this role and we're going to make that a regular series — and women's sports. In the past they've been overlooked. The Globe now has a reporter who's assigned to cover women's sports, and I'm not looking to take over her beat or anything like that, but I just want to add to it. We have a hockey team, a rugby team — there's a lot of great things going on, and I'm hoping to get more attention on them.

What was the transition from print to video like?

Honestly, seamless. I've been into video for a long time — I was like the first reporter to make videos to go along with my stories, and this was like 20 years ago. My focus was always print, and we've also built up an amazing, Emmy award-winning video department here at the Globe. But I always had my own social media channels and I'd post videos whenever I could. Having the chance to do it professionally and on a larger scale is just amazing. It's kind of like I'm pinching myself every day. Is this really happening?

So after posting videos all these years, when that home invasion video blew up, did you feel a sense of validation? Or was it more, wow, that really took off which is nice, I’ll enjoy this moment for now and move on. 

I honestly thought, okay, it's a one and done. I've seen this before, I'm on the internet all the time. And I also felt bad for the victims, because all this attention was going towards me. I didn't expect it to continue. But when the Globe asked if I could do a couple more videos, I was like, oh my god, yeah. I started labeling them — day two of my new broadcasting job at the Globe, I don't know how long it's gonna last. But then it went to day three, day four, day five, day six. After a while I stopped numbering them. Every single day, looking back until my job became official, I thought each day was going to be my last.

Well, congratulations on all the success! I probably know more about Boston news than I ever have in my life. When you’re off the clock, what’s your media diet like? Podcasts, apps, newsletters — what’s on your radar right now and how much phone screen time are you racking up these days?

ES: There were a couple days it was like 14 hours. But most days it's probably between eight and 10 — and then it really drops on the weekend. A little check.

The Boston Urban Archive, which is amazing. It was started by Ebony Gill — I don't know her personally, but I have such respect for just the curation of all these old photos, newspaper articles, and videos of different neighborhoods in Boston, mostly people of color, and a lot of things that are overlooked by mainstream media. 

And then Art But Make It Sports — I looked up the guy before this interview, his name is L.J. Rader, and he's an art enthusiast and also a sports guy. He takes scenes from current games and matches them up to a piece of art. He had a recent golf tournament shot that he compared to a Winslow Homer painting and they look exactly alike. I love that. 

A newsletter I really love is Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio. Full disclosure, she did a Q&A [with me], I think it was maybe a month or two ago, I'm not sure, but her newsletter is really good. A lot of great social media tips.

I also watch a lot of wilderness survival skills on TikTok — how to build shelters. That's kind of calming to put me to sleep. And then there's Matthew Dickey, he calls himself the streetscape curator — he goes into the history of buildings around Boston and the architecture. And Dart Adams — he's more than a creator, he's like a local historian and writer who talks about parts of Boston history that often get overlooked.

Editor’s note: Emily also shared a list of her favorite podcasts after the fact. In Emily’s words: 

What we’re seeing and hearing around the industry.

About that Dianna Russini NYT story. You've probably seen by now the sprawling New York Times piece on Dianna Russini's resignation from The Athletic (which NYT owns) after photos that suggested an inappropriate relationship with Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel went public in April. Honestly? After reading the entire thing, I shrugged.

The only real revelations were that she FaceTimed with an unnamed NFL coach — that was not Mike Vrabel — to get out of a traffic ticket she got while texting behind the wheel with her kids in the car, and that she makes $800,000 a year. No updates on the scandal, no new statement from either party. The traffic ticket thing is a real ethics breach and in poor taste, but it doesn't change the calculus of public perception any more than the scandal itself did.

Worth noting: when the New York Post came knocking about the photos, her first call wasn't to her Athletic editors. It was directly to Meredith Kopit Levien, NYT's CEO.

What I do find interesting: when you type Mike Vrabel's name into a search bar the results go almost entirely to stories about Dianna. No one in the media seems all that pressed to put him under the same microscope. The only recent piece about him is a little quip about needing a Patriots defensive player to step up — and this OutKick piece praising him for going to counseling. As readers of La Fronde, I don't even have to tell you why that is. You already know.

Speaking of Condé, someone got busted for promoting fake Vanity Fair Oscar Party tickets. A London court sided with Condé’s owner, Advance Magazine Publishers Inc., on a trademark infringement case in which the company claimed a London promoter was promoting tickets to some of its most prestigious tentpole events, including Vanity Fair’s Oscar Party and Met Gala. The promoter, Cornucopia Entertainment Ltd., was even trying to sell tickets to meet the Pope, reports claim. I wonder how one prices the going rate for a Pope. Takes a different mind than I have, I guess. 

This isn’t the first time they’ve been caught for something like this. Back in 2015, former MLB pitcher Cole Hamels said he got shafted by the same promoter after coughing up about $68,000 for what he thought were legitimate VIP tickets to Victoria Secret’s Fashion Show. Thankfully, I’m too poor to be conned in this way.

Anna Wintour scouts San Francisco as a potential Vogue World site. All this speculation on Vogue World’s next stop feels like we’re talking about where the next site of the Olympics will be. It’s a runway show, for Christ’s sake!

Some very astute observers in San Francisco noticed that Condé’s chief content officer and Vogue’s global editorial director Anna Wintour was spotted around the North Beach area of the city with a camera crew in tow. Allegedly to scout for a location to host next year’s Vogue World. 

The San Francisco Chronicle reached out to the company, which actually spoke on record for a change! Guess someone does actually read the Communications inbox after all. “We’re exploring the possibility of having Vogue World in SF, and Anna’s trip is an exploratory one to listen/learn,” a spokesperson for the company said. The next Vogue World is scheduled to happen on September 22 in Milan. 

Have a tip for me? Send it to [email protected] or my Signal if you want to keep things confidential (itsstephwill.94).

Alex Cooper is put in the hot seat. Alex Cooper addressed for the first time toxic workplace allegations at her company Unwell Media during a sit-down interview on Wednesday in Cannes with the Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica. She basically shrugged off the claims as just another episode of sexism in media: “Unfortunately, being a woman in this industry is extremely difficult because you’re held to a completely different standard,” she said. “Whether it’s a smear campaign being created for someone’s narrative, whatever it be.”

That double standard is obviously very real for women. But it’s hard to dismiss the toxic workplace claims as that when Vanity Fair’s investigation included more than 40 sources who were current or former employees, who would presumably be majority women. It was a very “I’m going to downplay this story so it hopefully fades away” move on her part. She’ll face the music again on Semafor’s Mixed Signals show today, so we’ll see if she addresses more on this (which, probably. Max Tani and Ben Smith are sharp at pressing on hard questions). 

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