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This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. If you just skimmed the press release, you wouldn’t really get the scale of it. On Monday, Vogue.com announced that Teen Vogue would be folded into its parent publication — part of a “transition, in which Teen Vogue will keep its unique editorial identity and mission.” That’s Condé Nast-ese for “we’re laying off nearly the entire team and stripping the publication for parts.” Nearly all of my former colleagues — including all but one woman of color and the only trans staffer — were let go. The identity and politics sections, which covered reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, campus organizing, state and national politics, the labor movement, education, and more were folded. The art team was decimated. The editor in chief was pushed out. The Black women editors behind some of the most popular franchises developed for the style and culture sections were laid off. The only issues name-checked as ones that will continue to be covered when Teen Vogue is subsumed into Vogue’s flagship website are “career development” and “cultural leadership.” As the Condé Nast union put it, the consolidation is “clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine’s insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most.” (Give them all work, money, and a follow: style editor Aiyana Ishmael, culture editor Kaitlyn McNab, politics editor Lex McMenamin, features director Brittney McNamara, design director Emily Zirimis, editor in chief Versha Sharma, visuals editor Bea Oyster, and writer, photographer and editorial assistant Skyli Alvarez). It’s another blow for media in a year that’s seen noted campus-free-speech-hysteric and Trump apologist Bari Weiss take the reins at CBS News; the Washington Post implode in on itself like a dying star; and the Trump administration choke off funding for public broadcasting. For teenagers, college students and early-career journalists trying to get their start in the industry, Teen Vogue cracked open the door. One of my favorite parts of the job, during the six years I spent on the politics team, was collaborating with writers to give them their first professional bylines. Many of Teen Vogue’s brilliant 2024 student election correspondents have gone on to journalism internships and full-time reporting roles at outlets like NOTUS and WVIA. There are so few entry-level positions left in news and, as edit budgets shrink, vanishingly few outlets that commission freelance stories. But what stings the most is the loss of one of the only publications that allowed young people to share their own stories and took them seriously as political actors. Teen Vogue published in-depth reporting on life for trans youth in red states and homophobia in Greek life at HBCUs; guides on organizing against ICE and how to seek abortion care as a teen; traffic-smashing, thoughtful profiles of Gen Z celebrities; and packages on waste in the fashion industry and the suppression of protest and dissent in the U.S. Fox News hated us. Some advertisers were wary of us. But many of those stories resonated. Still, our coverage was often met with versions of the same dismissive comment: Either “What does Teen Vogue think they’re doing covering X issue?” or “Can you believe Teen Vogue does good politics coverage?” But it was obvious to Teen Vogue’s team, and to successions of editors in chief starting with Elaine Welteroth and continuing with Lindsay Peoples and Versha Sharma, and executive editors Phil Picardi, Samhita Mukhopodyay and Dani Kwateng, that politics couldn’t be siloed off to just one section. It is in the music that flows through our speakers, in the hobbies we choose, in the faces we see walking down runways, in our schools and our sports. And young people care about all of it deeply. They are also uniquely targeted by lawmakers, who want to curtail their right to protest on campus; separate them from their immigrant parents; limit their access to a free and open Internet; pollute the earth they’ll inherit; restrict what subjects they can learn about in school; and limit their autonomy over their own bodies, whether they’re seeking gender affirming care or birth control. All of us on staff understood that. But Condé Nast didn’t. The outlet was always kind of an uncomfortable fit, publishing progressive coverage as the sister publication of a glossy outlet that would likely have preferred we “stick to fashion.” Condé is owned by Advance Publications, a business run by the billionaire Newshouse family. Editors would joke that we felt like we were getting away with something. The knives were always out, though, glinting in the corner of the room. By the time I joined in 2019, Teen Vogue had no staff writers, relying only on freelance contributors and columnists. Budgets were repeatedly cut. When art, commerce and style editors brought in lucrative partnerships and sponsor deals, the Teen Vogue team never really saw that money; instead, it went into the general slush fund keeping Condé Nast afloat. In January 2021, after the politics section had broken our traffic records with coverage of the COVID pandemic, George Floyd protests, election, and Capitol insurrection, Anna Wintour asked Lucy Diavolo, the former news and politics editor, if we still needed a politics section. After all, Joe Biden had won. Weeks ahead of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, I was told Anna didn’t want to hear the word “politics” in our team’s annual strategy meeting. I introduced myself as the editor handling coverage of “social issues.” By that point, there were so few of us left. During my time at Teen Vogue, our staff was halved. People would often be shocked to find out just how few of us there were. I joked that we were a Potemkin village — just a handful of journalists behind a shaky facade, answering emails with our toes while publishing stories with our elbows. (This is true at many other Condé publications, too; the company has shuttered brands like SELF in recent years and folded Pitchfork into GQ, and engaged in many rounds of layoffs). Readers would say they wanted to support the publication, but there was no way for them to do so. Teen Vogue’s print run ended in 2018, so there wasn’t an option to subscribe or purchase a membership. There was no paywall. There’s no way to donate to a for-profit company. Condé was content to hold Teen Vogue up as a prop for diversity, youth representation and progressive ideals when it benefited it, and then to unceremoniously discard the entire publication with a disingenuous press release when the winds shifted. The company’s leaders didn’t understand what Teen Vogue was about and the value it provided, but they did understand that it caused them headaches and didn’t make them enough money. We tried to support the creativity and organizing power of young people, while puncturing the narrative that Gen Z and the generations to follow are coming to the rescue. Building a sustainable, fairer future is on all of us. But Teen Vogue’s team had faith in young people. If only Condé Nast did too.
