News Information and Media Site: Byers Market: Samira Nasr and the media's future 'new guard'

June 10, 2020

By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles &

AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco

Good morning. 📅 Jack Dorsey has announced that Twitter and Square will recognize Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in America, as a company holiday. Jim Bankoff says Vox Media will do so as well. Expect more companies to follow suit.

👒 Sign of the times: AT&T's HBO Max has temporarily removed "Gone With the Wind" due to its "racist depictions." ViacomCBS's Paramount Network has cancelled "Cops," for good.

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New guard

Harper's Bazaar, Bon Appétit look to more diverse editors

Moving the Market: Harper's Bazaar has appointed its first Black editor-in-chief, while Bon Appétit's interim editor has called for a person of color to take over the role. Meanwhile, the top position at New York Times Opinion will be open for new leadership following the November 2020 election.

• The big picture: The changes, which come amid public outcry over racial injustice, may portend a new era of diversity among the media industry's top ranks. With current editors resigning and calls for greater representation at a fever pitch, the next class of top-ranking editors will likely be far more diverse.

Names to know:

• Samira Nasr was named the new editor-in-chief of the U.S. edition of Harper's Bazaar on Tuesday. She'll be the first black editor-in-chief in the magazine's 153-year history and will take over on July 6. Nasr was most recently executive fashion director at Vanity Fair.

• Amanda Shapiro was named acting deputy director of Bon Appétit on Tuesday, following the resignation of former editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport. Shapiro told staffers she'd only take the job on a temporary basis and said a person of color should be named EIC.

• Katie Kingsbury was named acting editor of The NYT's editorial page, following James Bennet's resignation on Sunday. Kingsbury joined The Times in 2017 and will serve in her new role through the November 2020 election.

• Plus: Refinery29 now has a vacancy created by the departure of Christene Barberich. The editor and co-founder stepped down in the interest of "making room...to help diversify our leadership."

Top quote: "As the proud daughter of a Lebanese father and Trinidadian mother, my world view is expansive and is anchored in the belief that representation matters," Nasr said in a statement.

• "My lens by nature is colorful and so it is important to me to begin a new chapter in Bazaar's history by shining a light on all individuals who I believe are the inspiring voices of our time. I will work to give all voices a platform to tell stories that would never have been told."

What's next: Expect more changes and upheaval as the media industry faces internal and external calls for diversity, and the past actions of some current editors continue to draw scrutiny.

Bloomberg/Getty

Condé trouble

Roger Lynch faces his staff

Moving Manhattan: Condé Nast chief Roger Lynch is facing complaints from staff over racial insensitivity at the publishing giant and pledged Tuesday to combat inequality both inside and outside the company, The Daily Beast's Maxwell Tani reports.

• The complaints come one day after Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport resigned amid allegations of race-based pay disparities and after an old photo surfaced in which he was dressed as a derogatory Puerto Rican stereotype.

The latest: On Tuesday, employees called attention to Condé Nast Entertainment chief Oren Katzeff and several old social-media posts that contained derogatory comments about Mexicans, women and sexual consent. Katzeff later apologized and said he was working at a comedic outlet at the time of the posts.

• The same day, former employees took to social media to publicly voice complaints about diversity issues. Zara Rahim, Vogue's former communications director, tweeted that she was paid $50,000 less than her predecessor.

Fuel on the fire: Lynch told staffers that Condé Nast could have dealt with their concerns sooner if they had been brought to the company's attention earlier — a statement that drew ire from employees who said their complaints had fallen on deaf ears.

Market Links

• Republicans push FCC to act on Section 230 (Reuters)

• Gerry Baker moves to WSJ Opinion, amid protest (NYT)

• Mark Zuckerberg launches News Tab in the U.S. (Verge)

• Sundar Pichai puts $15m to a local news ad effort (Poynter)

• Adam Aron says AMC Theaters will re-open in July (NYT)

Bloomberg/Getty

The ad game

An odd story on Facebook's ad business

Moving Menlo: The New York Times has published a somewhat mystifying story implying that brands are pulling back advertising spend on Facebook due to the social media giant's decision to not take action on President Trump's infamous "looting... shooting" posts.

• The big picture: The story doesn't really check out.

Facebook brought in $17.4 billion in advertising last quarter. The Times article provides evidence of a Trump-related hit to advertising revenue that, by even the most generous estimate, would be less than $100,000 for the quarter.

• The Times cites at most three very small brands that have pulled advertising spend from Facebook in light of the Trump tweets. One is a Swedish algae-growing business, another is a marketing agency that spends just $6,000 a month on Facebook ads.

Stranger still: The Times piece starts by citing a digital advertising executive who has encouraged his clients "to hold back millions in advertising dollars from Facebook," partly because of the Trump tweets. But...

• In the 27th paragraph, the Times cites the same executive saying that his clients had tripled their advertising spending in the past four months, but that some unnamed clients had moved their spend from Facebook to other platforms.

• In the 28th paragraph, the executive "conceded that his clients were likely to return to Facebook soon, because the platform 'is just the best option there is right now, in terms of cost and scale.'"

In between all this, the Times cites spending changes that major advertisers like Nike and Anheuser-Busch have made in recent months, but rightly notes that those are due to factors that are unrelated to Trump's posts, most notably the coronavirus pandemic.

• In the final paragraph, the Times quotes a small business owner who says, "Facebook ads are keeping small businesses alive. If you're not on Facebook, you don't exist." Which is maybe the real story.

What's next: There are great stories to be done on how the digital advertising business, which is dominated by Facebook and Google, is being affected by both the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing protests over racial injustice. The Trump "looting" posts don't really factor into that in a meaningful way.