This week Vogue (US) announced it will be taking over editorial control of Teen Vogue. This is terrible, terrible news. As part of this ‘absorption’, the entire Teen Vogue politics team, every Black woman, and the only trans woman are all being let go. Only one woman of colour is being kept on.

Teen Vogue was one of the only legacy media outlets that was actually responding to the polarisation of politics and the collapse of American democracy. When Elaine Welteroth was appointed editor-in-chief in 2016, Teen Vogue began transforming into a force of political education for young women in the States — as we know, young women are excluded and disengaged in politics.

Teen Vogue’s editor-in-chief Versha Sharma has been let go as part of the change. Her degree was in political science, and she had worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign before starting her journalism career at MSNBC and working on an award-winning documentary about the impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico. Now, the editorial direction of Teen Vogue will be overseen by Vogue’s new editorial director Chloe Malle. Malle is the daughter of American actress Candice Bergen and French director Louis Malle, and has worked for Vogue since 2011. I don’t think I need to say any more about this comparison. 

I’ve been a huge fan of Teen Vogue for most of my media career. For a decade Teen Vogue has published important journalism on politics (eventually with a dedicated politics team), sexuality and queer issues, reproductive rights and was a champion of racial diversity in media. When it comes to meaningful writing and culture for intelligent, worldly women, Teen Vogue left its “big sister” Vogue in the dust. 

But now, in Trump’s MAGAmerica, diversity must be squashed. If women must be heard, it will only be the conservative white women. Helping young women explore their identity and find their political voice in liberal of left wing politics is a threat — it must be silenced. As of now, I can only assume that is what Vogue, under directive of Condé Nast which owns both magazines, intends to do. 

A lot of people have already written about what this means for diversity and political reporting in America (this piece on Missing Perspectives is a great read). 

But I want to highlight an even more sinister aspect you might not be aware of.

As reported in Semafor, when the Teen Vogue takeover and staff redundancies were announced, a group of employees “confronted” Condé Nast’s head of HR to ask wtf was going on. In response, Condé Nast fired four of those employees, claiming they had “violated company policies”. 

Here’s where the plot thickens: All four sacked employees were leaders of the media union’s division within Condé Nast. The union (the NewsGuild of New York) put out a statement saying these employees were fired illegally; Condé Nast put out a statement saying it would file a complaint against the union for “egregious disregard of our collective bargaining agreement”.

Besides electoral politics, do you know one of the topics Teen Vogue covered a lot that Vogue literally never, ever touches? Unions and labor organising.

I actually think Teen Vogue might be the only mainstream, legacy publication for young women that published stories about the importance of unions and the ongoing struggle for workers rights. It has content tags for ‘labor’, ‘worker’s rights’ and ‘organising’. Here are a few of the articles from the past 12 months:

• How to Form Community at Work By Joining a Union

• I Went Undercover at Starbucks and Helped Launch a Union Movement

• Angelo Herndon, Labor Organizer, Became a Symbol of Resistance During His Insurrection Trial

• What Is Salting, the Organizing Tactic Spicing Up the Labor Movement?

• How The Trump Administration Is Making All of Our Jobs More Dangerous

Any ‘progressive’ media outlet, public figure or politician that does not talk about unions and worker’s rights is not really progressive or advocating for left-wing politics at all. Any media that focuses on representation (especially gender representation) while ignoring class cannot claim progressive politics or ‘empowerment’ either. 

We suffer from that badly in Australia too. While our equivalent pop culture and young women’s media have much smaller teams and not enough resources, they don’t cover politics anywhere near enough and I can’t recall reading about unions in the Australian versions of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan or anywhere else.  

The plot thickens even further with a little bit of gossip. Remember that rumour from a while back that Amazon founder and real-life-evil-villain Jeff Bezos wanted to buy Condé Nast as a wedding gift for his second wife, Lauren Sanchez? Vogue was absolutely panned for putting their very expensive but very ugly wedding on the cover. Teen Vogue has given plenty of positive coverage to the Amazon workers' union over the past few years (see here, here and here).

If those rumours are true, perhaps the silencing of Teen Vogue was a pre-requisite? 

Here’s another related-but-unrelated aspect to the whole thing. Loads have people have been celebrating Zohran Mamdani election as the mayor of New York City this weekend — including progressives across the US and here in Australia. Mamdani’s campaign is being talked about as the jolt of energy that we’ve all been looking for in the fight against fascism. And I agree!

But, just like we’ve seen with the Teen Vogue story, there is a union movement story that’s being ignored for a more palatable ‘representation politics’ story. Yes, Mamdani is the first Muslim mayor, is a brown immigrant, is young, smart, kind and is on the political left. But he didn’t pop up out of nowhere — Mamdani stood as a candidate for two parties: the Democrats and the smaller Working Families Party. He did so as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which is not a party but a political organisation that has evolved out of various labor movements and worker’s rights collectives. The DSA’s goal is to “fight for reforms that empower working people”.

It’s in the interest of big corporations that ad-supported media for young people doesn’t talk about worker’s rights, unions or collective action. They would rather we think a ‘star candidate’ like Mamdani won on his own, not with the support of a decades-long push from a huge pro-worker collective. 

Young people are usually the cheapest workers and some of the most easily exploited. Women’s rights and worker’s rights go hand-in-hand.

And that’s why the editorial coup at Teen Vogue makes me so fucking sad.
And in case it wasn’t clear: Join Your Union!

– Crystal
Founder & Chief of Everything at Zee Feed
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Smart stuff on the Internet 💭

All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:

Police allowed Nazi rally outside NSW parliament on Sydney Morning Herald
“Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said a notice of the NSN’s intention to hold the rally – made by a known leader of the group, with the stated purpose of criticising Jewish organisations – was first lodged with Sydney City Local Area Command on October 28. There was a communication error within the police force for which I did not personally know that today’s protest was taking place,” Lanyon said in a press conference called after the Herald sent questions to police and NSW Premier Chris Minns’ office.”

Win like Mamdani: Lessons from Zohran’s game changing victory on Cut Through podcast
Me again! On the Crikey pod talking about what the Australian left should learn from Mamdani’s victory. “Mamdani energised the working class over material issues including cost of living, housing and wealth inequalities, and overcame opposition from the ‘old school’ Democratic elite to show the party how to really scare Donald Trump. Will Mamadani’s win inspire (or force) the Democrats to pick up the pace in the fight against Trump? And how is the Australian left planning to apply Mamdani’s campaign tactics in the next 12 months?”

Comparing Mamdani’s win to Foxx's loss: proof that progressive policies win, not virality & identity politics on Varsha Yajman’s substack
Varsha is a frequent Zee Feed contributor — this is v good! “Foxx’s primary ways of differentiating herself were her lived experience with poverty and state systems, her age, and her digital skills … It shows us that identity politics of age, race and gender only gets you so far, and I thought New York Magazine summed up this point brilliantly.: ‘Yes, Foxx is quite young, as is Mamdani, but then again, so is Charlie Kirk, the MAGA organizational titan. He, too, is a social-media star. Should we draw lessons for Mamdani’s ‘momentum’ from Kirk’s success or failure?’”

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