Labor negotiations have stalled between the publisher and staffers at three of its subsidiary brands.

A group of roughly 100 employees at the New Yorker, Pitchfork, and Ars Technica are set to strike soon if they can’t reach an agreement with parent company Cond&ecaute; Nast. Maxwell Tani of the Daily Beast reports that the staffers “voted this week overwhelmingly in favor of moving ahead with a strike if Condé continues to rebuff demands about key issues, primarily around proposed wage increases.”

The conflict has been simmering for quite a while, says Tani: “The trio of Condé publications threatening to strike have each separately been involved in years-long bargaining negotiations with the parent company’s management to establish first-time union contracts ... but the glacial pace of negotiations has frustrated staff, who believe the company has been in no hurry to establish contracts with the unions.” Read more about the situation here.

Also Notable

Examining Good Housekeeping’s Membership Model

Nearly a year in, Good Housekeeping’s new membership program, GH+, is outperforming publishers’ projections. Kayleigh Barber of Digiday.com reports that the brand is on track to have 10,000 GH+ subscribers by the end of the first year. For $20 per year, subscribers get the print magazine and “access to all digital content, free challenges and bonus guides ... deals and discounts to retail stores and even the chance to be a product tester for brands that are hoping to capitalize on GH’s authority in product reviewing.” While revenue projections are relatively modest for the program, the experiment likely won’t stop at GH+. Barber note that “GH+ is still young and can very well serve as a test case for Hearst as it continues creating more digital subscriptions and membership offerings.” Read more here.

Publishers Resist Online Subscription Cancellations

Readers can do a lot online: engage with magazine brands, comment on content, converse with contributors on social media, and even purchase subscriptions to their preferred content. But many publishers aren’t making it quite so convenient to cancel those subscriptions. In a recent piece for Niemen Lab, Laura Hazard Owen talks about publishers’ reluctance to offer online cancellations, as shown in the results of a recent American Press Institue Survey. “Just 41% of U.S. news publishers “make it easy” for subscribers to cancel their subscriptions online,” she reports. Read the full piece here, and access the American Press Institute survey here.

Journalists Covering Anti-Asian Hate Crimes

The recent murders in Atlanta have brought issues of anti-Asian racism to the forefront for many publishers. On March 17, the Asian American Journalists Association issues its guidance for outlets covering this story and others like it. Among other things, the association cautions journalists not to cover Asian women in hypersexual terms, to provide greater context around the recent rise in violence against Asian Americans, and to look to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as experts and sources for research. Read the complete set of guidelines here.

McClatchy Outsources Design and Layout

News outlet McClatchy has been hard hit by the pandemic, with over 200 layoffs over the past year. Kristen Hare of Poynter.org reports this week that the downsizing continues: “On [March 29], McClatchy announced a change to its page design and typesetting via an email that Poynter obtained. At least 26 people will lose their jobs.” Page design and layout will go to Express KCS, a global vendor with offices in Connecticut, the UK, and India (according to their website contact information). The layoff will happen in three stages between May and August. Read more here.

Meredith/Amex Shutters Two Magazines

Two copublished titles from Meredith/Amex shuttered this month: Departures and Centurion magazines. Keith J. Kelly of the New York Post reports that “American Express ... will now take it over and run the mags as digital-only brands.” Kelly reports that group publisher Giulio Capua will stay at Meredith, but most of the magazines’ staffers were let go late last week. Read more here.

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