G/O Media (ownes by Great Hill Herbs Partners) engaged in bad faith bargaining, and, among other things, refused health care coverage for trans and gender diverse employees, and also refused to expand maternity leave past the scant few weeks.
After five long sessions tussling with G/O counsel, GMG Union members voted to strike (93% voted for strike).
Mutants are advised to show solidarity by boycotting: Kotaku, Jalopnik, The Root, Lifehacker, and Jezebel.
This post will be updated once a fair and equitable contract has been signed.
Victory. As of one hour ago, the GMG Union announced a signed contract with all desired provisions. All.
That whole suite of sites has been bleeding good authors for a while. I hope they gain some fair treatment for themselves and regain some of their former glory.
IO9, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and Gizmodo are all on my daily trawl–I’ve moved them to a secondary folder so I don’t accidentally click on them. Best of luck to the GMG Union!!
Oh hell yes. I stopped reading the sites shortly after the deadspin debacle. I’ll follow a link now and then to the root or jalopnik, but fuck herbs. I’ll be adding this to my regular rotation. Give me all the Torch.
The avclub will never return to its former glory… they closed the Chicago office. I mean, that site was historically a Chicago institution, it won’t be the same…
It’s not been the same for a while. The comment section, formerly the only place I ever posted online thoughts, has devolved from a den of pop-culture weirdos to a few die-hards and a bunch of anti-woke bros. Nathan Rabin’s departure was the first blow but they’ve lost so many fine writers since then.
I really like(d) the AV Club (before they were intentionally put into a death spiral). Does anyone from the peanut gallery have any suggestions for alternate sites? I’m hoping a group of contributes (maybe the group that just got forced out) will come up with something like the Jalopnik writers did, but not holding my breath.
I try to avoid those sites ever since lifehacker had the video of the soldier getting burned alive in a cage on its front page as some kind of a share from one of the other sites. It was disturbing enough to me that if they share “important” news from across the network that they put a snuff film on the page. Plus, I got talked to about it by corpsec.
But that said , I wish them the best in their union struggles and always support unions.
Kinja kills everything it touches. It’s like the anti-comment section comment section. I’ve tried for years to participate in good faith on the various GMG sites by providing thoughtful and reasoned replies, yet I can never seem to get out of the gray zone so my comments get buried making the whole endeavor a waste of time.
“Oh just participate more” they say - but why bother when the system is designed specifically to discourage participation? Why spend time trying to reply to stuff knowing it will be buried in the hope that some day in the future that maybe it won’t? Nah, fuck that. I have better things to do with my life.
(It also doesn’t help that actually logging in doesn’t seem to work like 90% of the time.)
