Shocking email editor sent staff telling them to write more to ‘offset’ colleague’s death
An editor of an online magazine is said to have sent staff a cheeky email, calling on them to produce more content to ‘compensate’ for the recent death of their colleague.
Stephanie Holland, a senior staff writer at The Root, died on December 31 at the age of 47, after producing more than 2,000 articles on African-American culture and entertainment for the outlet, according to her obituary.
One of her colleagues remembered her as “warm, inviting, funny and no-nonsense, yet kind and forgiving.
“She was more talented than she gave herself credit for, more patient than she realized, and wittier than she let on,” Shanelle Genai wrote about her friend.
But just days after Holland’s death, while The Root staff was still in mourning, deputy editor Dustin Seibert invoked her loss when he told the remaining staff writers that they needed to produce more content. Semafor reports.
“We need all of you to write four trending stories every day,” he reportedly wrote in an email. “This will bring us closer to the standards expected of everyday writers across the industry and help us compensate for the tragic loss of Stephanie.”
“If you’re working on a slideshow, you’re still expected to deliver just two more trending stories that day,” he clarified.
The guidance came in the course of a memo that outlined “some new approaches to our workflow in the interest of maintaining both the quality of work to which our readers have come to expect, and achieving the standards our superiors expect of us .’
Editor-in-chief Dustin Seibert (left) reportedly emailed staff members telling them to produce more content to “compensate” for the death of reporter Stephanie Holland (right)
Holland wrote more than 2,000 articles about African-American culture and entertainment for the outlet, according to her obituary
But the mandate at the black online magazine, as well as the explanation for it, alarmed some staff reporters, one of whom joked to Semafor that it was simply “more fun at G/O,” referring to its private equity business. backed company that owns the magazine.
Still, a company spokesman said Seibert’s comment about Holland was “taken out of context,” noting that the memo contained “reasonable industry standard targets that had been communicated to staff weeks ago.”
G/O Media was formed from the ashes of Gawker when it was sold to Great Hill Partners in 2019. It has since divested much of its assets and announced major layoffs.
It has also started looking for new ways to generate web traffic, including experimenting with artificial intelligence to produce stories about the Securities and Exchange Commission — with mixed results.