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Journalists' Unions Condemn Condé Nast's Gutting of Teen Vogue
"As the rest of Condé remained silent or hemmed and hawed over atrocities in Gaza, Teen Vogue printed some of the best analysis and reporting on Palestine in the country," said one journalist.
Nov 04, 2025
As praise poured in for Teen Vogue following Condé Nast's Monday announcement that the youth-focused magazine would be folded into Vogue.com and key staffers credited with driving the publication's incisive political coverage were being laid off, unions representing Condé Nast journalists condemned the decision to gut the award-winning magazine.
The consolidation of the two brands "is clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine’s insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most," said Condé United and its parent union, the NewsGuild of New York, in a statement.
Condé Nast announced Monday that Teen Vogue's editor in chief, Versha Sharma, was stepping down. The company said the publication, which ceased its print edition in 2017 and became online-only, would remain “a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission," but admirers of the magazine expressed doubt that it would continue its in-depth coverage of reproductive rights, racial justice, and progressive political candidates as the politics team was dissolved.
"I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers on other sections, and today is my last day," said politics editor Lex McMenamin. "To my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue."
The unions also said no reporters or editors would be explicitly covering politics any longer.
Sharma helped push the 22-year-old publication toward political coverage with a focus on human rights and engaging young readers on issues like climate action and Israel's US-backed war in Gaza.
"From interviewing [New York mayoral candidate] Zohran Mamdani on the campaign trail to catching up with Greta Thunberg fresh out of her detention in an Israeli prison to breaking down the lessons that Black Lives Matter taught protestors, Teen Vogue has been considered a platform for young progressives inside the glossy confines of Condé Nast," wrote Danya Issawi at The Cut.
Recent coverage from the magazine included a dispatch from Esraa Abo Qamar, a young woman living in Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza, about the Israel Defense Forces' destruction of schools there; an article linking the US government's support for Israel's starvation of people in Gaza to the Trump administration's cuts to federal food assistance; and Jewish protesters demanding that US companies divest from Israel.
The unions said six of its members, "most of whom are BIPOC women or trans," were being laid off, including McMenamin.
They added that Condé Nast's announcement included no acknowledgment of "the coverage that has earned Teen Vogue massive readership and wide praise from across the journalism industry."
"Gone are the incisive and artful depictions of young people from the Asian and Latina women photographers laid off today," said the unions. "Gone, from the lauded politics section, is the work that made possible the blockbuster cover of [billionaire CEO Elon Musk's daughter] Vivian Wilson, one of Condé Nast's top-performing stories of the year, coordinated by the singular trans staffer laid off today."
The journalists added that the publisher's leadership "owes us—and Teen Vogue’s readership—answers" about the decision to slash the boundary-pushing magazine's staff. "We will get those answers. And we fight for our rights as workers with a collective bargaining agreement as we fight for the work we do, and the people we do it for."
Emily Bloch, a journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and a former Teen Vogue staffer, said the consolidation of the magazine is likely "more than an absorption and clearly a full shift from the publication’s DNA," and noted that the decision was announced the day before New Yorkers head to the polls to vote for mayor in a nationally-watched, historic election in which Mamdani has been leading in polls.
"Laying off the entire politics team a day before the NYC election is heinous and a knife in the back to a brand that has solidified its importance for youth," said Bloch. "Devastating... It’s been a force for youth culture and politics since [President Donald] Trump’s first term. This is a major loss."
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North Carolina GOP Official Uses 'Connections With the Trump Admin' to Threaten ProPublica Journalist
“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump administration,” said the North Carolina GOP's communications director. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”
Oct 30, 2025
Republican Party officials are now using their "connections" to the Trump administration to threaten journalists into dropping critical coverage.
That's what Doug Bock Clark, a reporter for ProPublica, recently discovered as he worked on a feature-length story on the rise of Paul Newby, the Republican chief justice of North Carolina's Supreme Court, who has become one of the most quietly influential jurists in the nation.
The piece published Thursday examines how Newby, a born-again Christian who was elected to the bench in 2004, believes he was called by God to exact what he calls "biblical justice."
Over the past two decades, Clark wrote that Newby has "turned his perch atop North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of political power" and "driven changes that have reverberated well beyond the borders of his state."
Newby's most significant contribution has been the landmark decision that legalized partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina, a state that had long had some of the strongest laws in the country against partisan redistricting.
The change led the state's Republican-controlled Legislature to draw up wildly slanted maps that netted the GOP an additional six seats in the US House of Representatives in 2024, handing the party a national trifecta at the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term, which has allowed him to wield extraordinary power almost totally free of oversight from Congress.
It's just one of the ways, Clark said, that "Newby has provided a blueprint for conservatives to seize most of the nation’s state supreme courts, which have increasingly become the final word on abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights."
The report drew from more than 70 interviews with those who know Newby professionally and personally. But he was unable to get in contact with Newby himself.
"I reached out to Newby multiple times during the course of my reporting and was even escorted out of a judicial conference while trying to interview him," Clark wrote on social media. "The court’s communications director and media team also didn’t respond to detailed questions."
When Clark attempted to contact Newby's daughter for comment, he instead received an ominous message from that aforementioned communications director, Matt Mercer.
Mercer ranted that ProPublica was waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans,” which would “not be met with dignifying any comments whatsoever.”
He continued: “I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump administration, and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter. I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”
As Clark pointed out, "He bolded and underlined 'strongly,' in case we missed his point."
After the story, which made note of Mercer's threat, was published, Mercer then doubled down on social media, urging Trump to "feed ProPublica to the USAID wood chipper," referencing the president's near-total stripping of funds from the foreign aid agency.
Trump has issued an executive order slashing federal funds for media organizations supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, like NPR and PBS, in response to critical coverage of his administration. But it's not entirely clear how he would actually go about doing such a thing to ProPublica, which does not receive government dollars but instead subsists on private grants and donations.
At any rate, Mercer's messages were widely perceived as a not-so-veiled attempt to coerce ProPublica into ceasing its inquiries.
Travis Fain, a freelance reporter who previously worked for Raleigh's NBC News affiliate, WRAL, expressed disbelief at Mercer's belligerence on social media: "Well, there you go," he said. "The North Carolina Republican Party officially threatens journalists now."
Wiley Nickel, the former Democratic US House representative for North Carolina's 13th District, lamented that it was "not normal" for a party official to "threaten ProPublica with retaliation from Trump" for writing a profile about another GOP official.
Despite the threats, Clark says "ProPublica persisted" with the story that Mercer "warned [it] not to tell."
"I'm always amazed when grown-ups with jobs say things like this to journalists," said Jessica Huseman, a former ProPublica reporter. "Like, do you think that's gonna do anything but make us more eager to publish the story?"
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'Pro-Trump Propagandists' Take Over Pentagon Press Corps After Signing Loyalty Pledge
Critics called the department's announcement "deeply weird and awful," "so Orwellian," and "real textbook fascism beginning to end."
Oct 22, 2025
Less than a week after most journalists covering the US Department of Defense turned in their press credentials and carried out their belongings in boxes over Secretary Pete Hegseth's new restrictions on reporters, his chief spokesperson announced "the next generation of the Pentagon press corps," which critics quickly condemned as a collection of right-wing propagandists.
Even many right-wing outlets—including the Daily Caller, Newsmax, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, and Fox News, where Hegseth was previously a host—have refused to sign on to the new rules at what President Donald Trump has dubbed the Department of War (DOW). The policy limits where reporters can go without an official escort and, most controversially, restricts them from soliciting or reporting on information not approved by the government, even if it is unclassified.
"We are excited to announce over 60 journalists, representing a broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists, have signed the Pentagon's media access policy and will be joining the new Pentagon press corps," Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesperson, said Wednesday on the social media platform X. "Twenty-six journalists across 18 outlets were among the former Pentagon press corps who chose to sign the DOW media access policy."
"New media outlets and independent journalists have created the formula to circumvent the lies of the mainstream media and get real news directly to the American people," he wrote. "Their reach and impact collectively are far more effective and balanced than the self-righteous media who chose to self-deport from the Pentagon. Americans have largely abandoned digesting their news through the lens of activists who masquerade as journalists in the mainstream media. We look forward to beginning a fresh relationship with members of the new Pentagon press corps."
According to the Washington Post, which obtained a draft announcement:
The coalition of signatories includes streaming service Lindell TV (started by MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell), the websites the Gateway Pundit, the Post Millennial, Human Events, and the National Pulse. It also includes Turning Point USA's media brand Frontlines, as well as influencer Tim Pool's Timcast, and a Substack-based newsletter called Washington Reporter. The memo said that "many independent journalists" also signed, but did not specify who they were.
Timcast, the National Pulse, and the Washington Reporter all confirmed to the Post that they had signed the policy. The Post Millennial, Human Events, TPUSA Frontlines, Lindell TV, and the Gateway Pundit all confirmed on X, as did Just the News.
A wide range of critics, including many journalists, sharply condemned the "Pentagon Propaganda Corps" as "a predictable clown car of loyalists," and "a who's who of pro-Trump propagandists." They called Parnell's announcement "deeply weird and awful," "so Orwellian," and "real textbook fascism beginning to end."
The public must be made to recognize that any "journalist" still holding a Pentagon press credential is actually just a stenographer for propagandists, and anything they report should be met with deep skepticism if not outright rejection.
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— Josh Richman (@joshrichman.bsky.social) October 22, 2025 at 2:32 PM
"This reads like they're announcing the handpicked contestants of a new reality series," said journalist and television news producer John Flowers.
Africa Report's Julian Pecquet quipped, "That's a lot of stenographers."
Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, said, "Press corps as adjuncts of the administration."
Breaking Defense reporter Valerie Insinna wrote that it is "important to note that all of the defense trade publications refused to sign the Pentagon's media access policy, and we write about budget and military technology—not exactly what you think of when you envision 'activists who masquerade as journalists.'"
Other journalists now covering the Pentagon from afar used Parnell's X post to share their contact information.
"If anyone is interested in speaking to a member of the current generation of the press corps… the one that is still aggressively covering the Pentagon," wrote Konstantin Toropin of the Associated Press, "you can find me on Signal at ktoropin.73."
Reuters' Idrees Ali similarly said, "If you want to talk to the 'old' generation of the press corps, which continues to cover the Pentagon accurately and aggressively, you can reach out to me on Signal at idreesali1141.43."
Heather Mongilio of USNI News, the US Naval Institute's independent news service, stressed that "defense journalists that turned in their badges continue to cover the Pentagon and military, even if they do not have desks."
"See news of the eighth strike on a suspected drug boat as an example," she continued, referring to Trump's latest illegal bombing in international waters—the first in the Pacific. "As always, I can be reached at HMongilio.52 on Signal."
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