The National Writers Union and its digital media division, the Freelance Solidarity Project, reject and condemn Vox Media’s decision on May Day — an international holiday celebrating the history of the labor movement — to lay off a majority of Polygon staff without warning as part of the sale of the games and entertainment website to known media-brand-destroyer Valnet.
According to Vox Media Union, this marks the fifth round of layoffs at Vox Media brands within six months. This week’s layoffs, which also included staff at New York Magazine and Vulture, took place during a collective bargaining process in which the Vox Media Union says “the company has thus far rejected all of the union’s economic proposals and refuses to offer meaningful counters.”
In a precarious industry in which freelance workers simultaneously compose the majority of journalists covering entertainment and compete for vanishing assignments at lower and lower pay, Polygon has been a bastion of ethical entertainment journalism. To our union’s knowledge, Polygon’s editorial staff have consistently followed the key tenets of the Freelance Solidarity Project’s Principles for Working with Freelancers: being transparent and fair with their rates, providing clear contracts at the outset of an assignment, and paying freelancers in a timely manner. Every website sold to Valnet is a tragedy for entertainment journalism and internet culture, but losing the workers who make Polygon a great publication both to freelance for and to read is a particular gut punch.
Over the past decade, Valnet has made a business model out of buying up independently-owned, fan-centric entertainment journalism sites, laying off large swaths of staff, and replacing salaried labor with contract workers who are expected to produce large volumes of clickbait and copy work for little pay. Previous websites sold to Valnet, including Screen Rant, Collider, CBR, and MovieWeb, pay as little as $15 per article; in an investigative report published by TheWrap senior film reporter Umberto Gonzalaz in March, one former contributor described the working conditions at a site under the Valnet umbrella as “almost sweatshop-level.” Valnet is currently being sued by another freelance worker, David Quintiliano, who hopes to establish a class action suit for similar allegations of oppressive work conditions.
Other media conglomerates have been accused of similar abuses, and these are only the most recent layoffs in a long series of cruel cuts after Big Tech and private equity began meddling in our industry over a decade ago at the cost of our livelihoods. Entertainment journalism is work, and all work deserves to be paid a living wage. If the publication models of the digital age won’t allow us to work in dignity, then workers will continue to build our own alternative structures.
We stand in solidarity with the former Polygon, Vulture, and New York Magazine staff who were laid off, and with Vox Media Union in their ongoing contract negotiations. We call upon games and other entertainment journalists to join the National Writers Union and its digital media division, the Freelance Solidarity Project, in building collective power to fight for the ethical labor conditions and more just media industry that all of us deserve.
