Two top Wired.com employees announced Thursday that they’re stepping down from the Conde Nast title, with one of them citing “burnout” and the other simply saying he is “exhausted.”
“Hi, some big news: I’m leaving @Wired next week,” Meagan Greenwell, editor at Wired.com tweeted on Thursday.
Greenwell, who recently wrote a story for Wired about “how to cope when your company lays off all its support staff and you no longer have time to do your actual job,” cited “burnout.”
Scott Rosenfield, Wired’s site director in charge of digital strategy, also tweeted on Thursday that he is leaving the company, effective immediately, claiming “exhaustion.”
“In all seriousness, today is my last day at WIRED,” Rosenfield wrote. “I’m exhausted and proud. I’ve decided that now is the right time for me to figure out what comes next. And I’m confident that the wonderful WIRED team is ready to chart a brave path forward.”
Greenwell in her goodbye post tagged journalist Millie Tran, who on March 30 revealed she was leaving her job as the chief product officer at the Texas Tribune, which she joined last March after leaving her job as deputy off-platform editor at the New York Times.
“Several journalists I admire, most recently @millie and @s_m_i, have been open about leaving their jobs because of burnout. Like them, I am totally drained, and I’ve realized I cannot do my best work without a break,” Greenwell said.
Tran didn’t return a request for comment, but on March 30 she tweeted: “Crises also clarify. I realized it’s essential to give as much care to the entirety of my life as I do my work. So I’m leaving @texastribune & will stay in New York.”
Like many news organizations, Conde Nast laid off 100 people last year, including staffers at Wired, amid company-wide layoffs as a result of the COVID-19 induced ad slump.
Conde’s unionized editorial workers at that time blasted Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch over “meager or nonexistent” severance packages doled out to laid-off staffers.
Wired in late December also lost its editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson, who jumped to Atlantic Media as its new CEO. Gideon Litchfield was recruited from MIT Technology Review to the newly created post of global editorial director in charge of Wired’s five worldwide editions, but he did not start until March 22.
Neither Conde nor Rosenfield nor Greenwell returned calls seeking further comment.
“I’m a little terrified!,” Greenwell tweeted of her own looming exit next week. “I don’t know who I am without working 10-plus hours a day. I’m a woman who wants to run a newsroom again, and I know admitting weakness could hurt my career. But this conversation is important, and I can’t preach transparency without practicing it myself.”
Greenwell tweeted, however, that she hopes to team up with Rosenfield and land some consulting gigs.