March 10, 2026 • 51 mins
Baby boomers, millennials, now Gen Z -- they all have their haters. Whichever generation is in their twenties is always walking around with older people rolling their eyes at them. As the former Editor in Chief of Teen Vogue, journalist and millennial Versha Sharma is here to help us understand the seemingly cyclical generational pecking order.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the nineteen sixties, it was the hippie baby boomers
who really stressed out their parents what their lack of direction,
their love of psychedelic drugs, and their obsession with things
like beads and flowers and world peace. In the twenty tens,
it was millennials, also known as the MEMI Me generation,
with their avocado toasts, their inability to move out of
(00:23):
their parents' homes, and their supposed sense of entitlement, which
society blamed on them getting too many trophies as kids,
not for winning, mind you, but just for showing up.
Beyond these broad generalizations, my point is this, every generation
has its haters, baby Boomers, millennials, now gen Z, whichever
generation is in their twenties, is walking around with older
(00:45):
people rolling their eyes at them. And I know this
because I'm no longer in my twenties and I'd definitely
roll my eyes at them.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
If your generation or older generations feels that way about
younger millennials. Gen Z takes that again to an even
higher level of setting boundaries in the workplace, sometimes unrealistic boundaries.
I would say, as the manager.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Today, I am speaking with Varsha Sharma. She's a journalist, editor,
fashion icon, very kind, very smart person and as you
may know, the former editor in chief of teen Vogue.
For years, Varsha has helped define how older generations see
gen Z and how gen Z sees itself. And she's
(01:29):
here to help me understand. Is this generational pecking order
a cyclical tendency that just sort of happens, or is
society scrutinizing gen Z in a particular way because they're
legitimately growing up in a way that no generation ever
has before.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Here we Go again again again.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Hey, I'm Cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Here we go? Can you guys hear me?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Okay, was there delay?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Or it's okay, It's fine?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Now great? Hi?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Cal?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Oh good? How are you?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I'm Versus Sharma, and I am a journalist and most
recently the editor in chief of Team Vogue.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
All right, so, for the past like fifteen years you've
been working as a journalist, and not just any kind
of journalist you've worked at. Now, this, which is where
you and I first met, is that.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yes, right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, you reminded me of after we became friends. Yeah,
but you're not any kind of journalist, as I was saying,
you were the editor in chief of teen Vogue. You
won an Edward Morrow Award. So I guess the question
behind all the intro is like, what motivated you to
pursue journalism to begin with? And was was there like
(03:02):
a singular moment like I've got this weird moment when
I was in eighth grade. Combination of like being bullied,
playing the tin man in The Wizard of Oz and
seeing Mississippi Massala for the first time. All of that
codified to be like you should be an actor. Do
you have a moment like that in your life?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yes. Like many millennials, my political and journalistic awakening was
the war in Iraq, the beginning of the war in
Iraq with Bush and I remember I was fifteen. Well,
it's a combination of nine to eleven because I was
in high school when nine to eleven happened, and immediately
an hour after the attack, some of my classmates were
(03:38):
racist towards me because of the color of my skin.
But then fast forward to two thousand and three and
the lead up to the war in Iraq, I was
a teenager and as part of our Amnesty International chapter
at my high school, we organized like a vigil for
Iraqi civilians because we disagreed with the war and the premise,
(03:59):
and I didn't understand how I, as a teenager, could
see through the administration's lies and like mainstream journalism wasn't
being skeptical enough of Colin Powell's you know, assertions about
yellow uranium, whatever it might be. I was shocked, and
I was like, wow, the people in charge don't get it,
or they're completely fine with this march towards war that
(04:21):
is going to end up killing a lot of people.
So I mean, I was I was always interested in
writing from a young age. I didn't know if I
wanted it to be fiction or nonfiction, but it was
it was that moment that I was like, I want
to be a truth teller and I want to be
a journalist.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So I'm a bit older than you, and so my
Iraq war was your bush's dad's Iraq wars. There you go, yes,
So it was like, yeah, here we are talking about
cycles in generational cycles, and it's like, oh, it was
just a different Iraq War. Yeah, it was like the
same family.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, And I was in speech and debate in high
school and I remember like giving one of the speech
about the war in Iraq, and again as a teenager,
I was like, part of this is like clearly related
to Bush Senior and whatever relationship they have and the
legacy and all of that, and like, I just don't
get how other people are not seeing this or talking
(05:15):
about it at a high level.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
When you were, when you were skeptical about that and
looking into it. This was like way pre social media, right,
So there weren't were there any clips of what was
actually happening on the ground and the horrors that our
government was responsible for.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
That's a great question. Definitely not on social there was
no social media. I remember I remember watching Bombs over
bag Dad on CNN, like that was that was the
footage that I remember seeing of us A bombing Iraq,
But nothing like we see now. The other thing I'll
say quickly, and this is why I loved your work
at The Daily Show so much, is that you know
(05:50):
John Stewart of that era was definitely like I was like, oh,
this is the guy who's actually telling it like it
is so that inspired the journalistic kind of approach that
I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
That's awesome. So, Okay, you're a millennial yourself, And part
of this is just kind of looking at this generational
thing of like, Okay, when we were kids, you know,
every parent is like, you guys have it easy. When
when I was a child, I had to do this,
this and this, and the chip on my shoulder about
some of this also is like I'm not so old,
which my cousins who are my age and even a
(06:23):
little younger, often remind me that, like they think it's
weird that my personality is kind of sophomoric. They're like, like,
you don't. I just think it comes with being an artist, right,
Like you have a lot of friends who are Any
friend who's an artist is like, oh, you're just like
your personality is a little bit different than your friend
who maybe has some more traditional job or a more
(06:43):
traditional career. Or I also don't have kids, so there's
just kind of a different My day to day is
very different. But I do remember. This leads into the
question that I was about to ask you. I do
remember there are things where I'm like, oh, I found myself.
This is a few years ago. But I found myself
being like, oh, this generation just doesn't work as hard
(07:04):
as our generation did. And then I tried to like
distill what I meant by that, and I realized it
was two things. One was like, you know, we used
to have to work for free for everything, which meant
that you would have other jobs. Obviously it was very
restrictive based on whether your parents could give you money.
But all of the entertainment internships that I had were
(07:24):
for free, and so I would have other jobs to
pay for this free work that I was doing for people. Yes,
and you would be like verbally abused, just constantly, and
I'm glad that. So I'll give you the positive and
the criticism. The criticism was like nobody wants to work
for free, right, And I like didn't see the own
irony in what I was saying. But then on the
(07:46):
flip side, I was like, thank god, these kids are
standing up for themselves and like not willing to be
verbally abused at least in the free work that they
don't want to do. So it's just like a funny.
I obviously have checked myself since on both of these things. Yeah,
but so you're a bit younger than me, you're a
millennial yourself. What were some of the big critiques you
remember hearing about millennials when you were coming of age
(08:09):
and then was there like like sort of like my
thing of like they're lazy, they don't want to get
yelled at. Was there like a particularly egregious, ridiculous stereotype
that you remember.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's such a good question. I mean, I feel like
for millennials it's like, oh, like we we killed everything fun,
or like we spent too much, we spend too much
money on our avocado toast in our coffee, and that's
why we can't own homes, which is like such bullshit. Yeah,
among other things. But I feel like for for millennials,
it was definitely the common misconceptions of like, yeah, they
(08:39):
don't want to work as hard. Oh, they all want
to be creatives or actors. But this is taken to
an even more intense degree with gen Z and younger
because now it's like one in five kids says they
want to be a creator as a career, which like
that's interesting, but you know there are different sides to that.
But I think, yeah, just that like we're self absorbed,
where two in our phones, we're too much spending too
(09:03):
much online, too much on the internet, not enough time
in person. I feel like those are those were pretty
standard ones that I remember immediately, and I think as
a champion of millennial leaders especially like I think that
the big pluses that we bring are like empathy, right,
like empathy in the workplace, empathy and leadership. And then
this will get into the generational divides again if your
(09:27):
generation or older generations feels that way about younger millennials.
Gen Z takes that again to an even higher level
of setting boundaries in the workplace. U sometimes unrealistic boundaries,
I would say, as a manager, and it's it's totally
like there's there's a fine line between being like, yes,
they should stand up for themselves and what they deserve
(09:49):
between that and like, okay, you're acting a little entitled,
like totally, you're you're you are lucky to have a
millennial as a manager versus a boomer and you're maybe
you don't know though, because you've never had a boom
er manage you, so then you just have nothing to
compare it to.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, I do guess lectures at colleges a lot, and
that's a thing that comes up often, which is like
you can tell there's someone who's like, had an internship
for a summer and they feel very entitled. They're like,
you know, I mean within two years, I want to
be a VP at this company, and what do I
do to blah blah blah. I was like, oh, actually,
that's I would not set that as your goal, right,
I certainly wouldn't tie your happiness to that goal within
(10:26):
two years. Yeah, but if you have a plan about
how you can do that, give yourself a five year
plan and figure it out.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
No, it's a real thing. I've managed a lot of
millennials and gen z and the idea that like you
should get a promotion and a title change and a
salary increase every year is so real. I'm like, guys,
look at the economy, Like, come on.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
When we were at the White House, I remember distinctly,
so my job was was the President's youth outreach person,
and I had this one me that made me feel
so old, but I really appreciated getting checked on this.
So I was probably when I was thirty two, I
think roughly when I had that job, So like I
(11:10):
wasn't young, but I wasn't old. And the President used
to joke with me. He's like, you know, if you
have gray hair, you can't have this job anymore. And
I was like, I don't have gray hair.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So some people go great early.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
No, I know, I know. He was just he'd like
to throw a little bit of fun shade. But I
walked into this meeting one day and it was with
a group of young organizers who were really agitated that
the president was going through a legislative process for something
that they wanted done. And you know, I worked in
the first two years of the Obama administration, so it
(11:42):
was before a lot of executive orders. It was when
he was still trying to get things done through Congress,
which takes a really long time, and it takes time
by design because the type of democracy that we have
up until recently obviously is designed to be slow, and
that the fact that it's slow is a benchmark of
a healthy democracy and all of that. So they were
(12:02):
basically like telling me that Obama needed to do more
and move faster, and it was a note well taken,
but I also pushed back and said, like, you guys
really need more patients, and they were like why, I'm like,
because change is not. I said something cheesy like change
is not a light switch. It's not like you send
a tweet and like immediately it gets done right right,
(12:22):
And it was a little belittling, to be honest, I
recognize that now. And the person on the one of
the kids on the other at the other end of
the table just goes, why, like what do you mean,
because why do we need to have patience?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
It was like, because that's just not how the system works. Like, So,
just to let you know, I always grew up with
a cell phone. I always grew up with the internet.
Information is available to me from the time I was born,
literally with the tap of a finger. Yes, and there's
nobody else who's going to be born who doesn't have that.
(12:57):
So I don't think it matters that I don't have patience.
I think you guys are the ones who need to
be a little bit quicker about this. And I was
just sort of floored. I was like, first of all,
like this kid is right, Like she one hundred percent
is saying the truth. The second thing is the nature
of our democracy is not going to change with three
(13:17):
branches and things taking a long time, but there must
be a way here. To harness that amazing energy that
generation has and instead of turning it into complacency, which
unfortunately I think we see a lot more of now
because of the way that things play out. But like,
there's got to be a way to harness that into
something incredible. And you've certainly seen like success stories that
came out of that too, But you just reminded me
(13:39):
of that, because.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, it's so real. I feel like I, for the
most part, I really applaud, embrace, elevate young people's inpatients,
and I think a lot of the work that I've
done is trying to put that into context for other
audiences and generations. But it makes sense, like what you're
saying about how they were born into this world with
instant access to basically everything, but also the way that
(14:01):
they watched older generations screw screw up, and the fact
that because of older generations and what they did now
they have twelve years to solve the climate crisis, right, Like,
they truly are running out of time on a number
of fronts because of what previous generations did. So then
I'm like, yeah, I respect the impatients, I get it.
I think it totally makes sense and the adults in
(14:24):
charge weren't doing what they were supposed to do, so
why not give young people a chance?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah, and I'm I'm I'm also like very excited to
see who the validators become in the world, like politically,
And this goes back to actually the part of the
thing I wanted to ask you. So that same time
where I got called out in the White House for
by that group of young people, one of the biggest
(14:51):
validation points that I remember the Comm's team pointing to
for young people was teen Vogue, and it was the
kind of thing like I wasn't allowed to do very
much right. I was basically a mid level White House aid.
Any time I spoke or wrote something, I had to
use talking points. I wasn't allowed to use the skill
(15:11):
set that I had. That's what I signed up for.
I'm not lamenting that, I'm just saying that was the reality.
So there were very few places that we would look
to to say who's actually doing it right and who
has the impact in teen Vogue was one of those
places that was slightly to the left of the mainstream
Democratic Party, which meant that it was very helpful oftentimes
(15:32):
for an article to be in teen Vogue that was
like pushing right from the left because it created the
space for politicians to act. So what I'm curious about,
because we haven't explicitly talked about this, I know that
version of teen Vogue from like when I was there,
when I was when I was in government, and obviously
having been a fan because they were generally kind to
me for movies and things. When you came into teen Vogue,
(15:55):
it was twenty twenty one, yes, So what do you
recall the brand looking like and really like feeling like
to you? Yeah, and how would you describe your first
day if you remember your first day?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about that in
alone time. That's a great question. Well, what I'll say
about the time coming into it was I was, like you,
like definitely in twenty sixteen or twenty fourteen, twenty sixteen
and beyond, so end of Obama going into Trump. Such
a fan of the way that teen Bogue was reporting
on politics amongst everything else, and have been a long
(16:29):
time just like fan of that kind of journalism right,
serving young audiences, actually reflecting what young people think, and
diving into it. So twenty twenty one, when I came
into the job, it was a little less than one
year since the murder of George Floyd and those nationwide
then international protests. Obviously, we were like smack in the
(16:49):
middle of the pandemic or just at the beginning of
the pandemic. So young people's lives, whether they were in
high school or college, were being severely disrupted. That was
a big part of it. So I came in at
a time where I was like, we need to be
listening to young people more than ever, because they truly
are having once in a lifetime, once in a century,
(17:10):
events happening to them that are happening to all of us,
but it's happening to them at such a critical, important
formative age, and they are going to need our help
and our council and whatever we can give them our advice,
if there we have any advice for surviving a pandemic.
So that was so important to me to reflect coming
into it. And I think I don't know that I
(17:31):
remember my very first day, but I remember the first
column that I wrote as editor in chief, and this
was like it was an instant idea that I had
when I came into It was about Darnella Frasier, who
was the seventeen year old girl who filmed towards Flord's murder.
And we would not have seen what happened if this
brave young teenager had not done what she did. And
(17:52):
to me, that was just like it was an example
of like what we ask young kids to do, what
we ask black people to shoulder, definitely black women. And
my thesis was like, this is what's happening, this is
what's shaping our world. Young people are now at the
forefront of the climate and racial justice movements. We need
to listen to them. Like that was like my number
(18:12):
one was just we need to listen to them. And
then I don't know if you remember. This is like
a little bit of media drama, but there was this
period where they appointed an editor in chief before me,
and that caused a controversy because this woman had anti
Asian and anti gay tweets. This is also the time
(18:32):
when those Asian hate crimes were happening because of COVID.
But like the Spa the spaw murders in Atlanta, like
right around that time.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
I don't remember this, Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
So Conde Nast appointed an editor in chief who had
these anti Asian and anti gay tweets from when she
was a teenager, and some people were like, everybody tweets
dumb stuff when they're a teenager. Give her a chance.
She's rehabilitated, she can do this. She can leave the
brand and another camp of people, which you know, I
(19:03):
can't most love as part of generally, I'm not saying
anything against this woman personally, was like, the editor in
chief of teen Vogue cannot be somebody who underestimates teens.
Like it's all about house like not talking down to them,
not underestimating them. And so that's that's how I ended
up getting the job, like out of that controversy. So
(19:24):
I also came into this time where like the teen
Vogue team was not happy with corporate leadership. I had
to build trust between that team and then rebuild trust
in the audience because the audience was also disappointed that
this set happened.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
How did you rebuild trust with the audience and how
did you get to know the audience going from obviously
knowing the brand to like to leading it.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I mean I knew some people on the team already,
which definitely helped. Like there were people I'd worked with
that past jobs. I feel like that was what was
so important to me in like that first year, but
definitely the first months of my job, it was just
listening and I think, like, this is this is the problem.
This is why I harp on about listening to young
people all the time, is because they are so often
ignored or written off that I don't think adults or
(20:09):
older people realize how powerful it is for them to
feel heard. And so that was my big thing coming
into teen Vogue and Conde. I was like, this team,
which is an amazing team of young people, do not
feel heard by corporate leadership, right, Like that was part
of the controversy. So it's my job to listen and
(20:29):
build bridges and try to bring them to the table
together and facilitate conversations and dialogue. And that's also true
externally with our audience. And I think the same reason
that I wrote that up ed or editor's letter about
Darnella Frasier, I wanted the audience to know Teen Vogue
is committed to these causes and this is the kind
(20:49):
of journalism that you're going to see under my leadership
as well.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Was it a conscious decision to both run pieces that
were kind of insightful, thoughtful, tough, and also oftentimes they
were in the same piece, but sometimes there were complementary
pieces that were like very inspiring. Right, you wouldn't read
(21:22):
teen Vogue and feel like nothing mattered. You would read
teen Vogue and feel like, wow, if that person did this.
I'm not saying I have to run out and join
a political campaign, but I just need to be mindful
of what my role in my community is. Like, how
do you do I assume this was on purpose?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yes, it was. It was absolutely intentional. That's like highlighting
like the solutions and the change makers and the people
actually creating impact in their communities is part of the
teen Bogue and now this DNA. That's some of my
favorite kind of journalism. So it was very intentional that, yeah,
we need to report on the world as it is,
(22:00):
and there's a lot of bleak stuff happening in the world,
but there are a lot of amazing people who were
trying to improve their communities and help each other, and
they need to be equally highlighted in our coverage as well. Yeah,
absolutely intentional.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
When you decided what to cover and what not to cover,
I can't imagine that's easy for any of my friends
who work in especially print journalism, since you had to
get to know a new leadership team while you're leading
people at the magazine. Were there were there cases where
there were stories that you wanted to cover that you
(22:35):
couldn't cover. Were there stories that were people encouraged you
to cover that you didn't think were relevant to your
audience or did you have kind of freedom within that
space to craft it the way that you wanted?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, I definitely had freedom to craft. There were definitely
pitches that I went nowhere, Pitches from leadership or external
people or elsewhere were like, maybe Team Bolks should think
about this, and I was like, no, that's not really
how young people feel or what they're thinking about. So
I'll do a polite pass on this. But I will
(23:09):
give credit to Conde Nast for, at least at the
beginning of my tenure, the way that they treated their
editors in chief was to allow them to be the
experts on their audiences and brands and really to let
them independently lead what that coverage looks like like that
that is one hundred percent. As time went on, I mean,
(23:34):
we I don't know how much we want to get.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Into this, but like as much as you want.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
I mean, October seventh, twenty twenty three changed everything for
media and journalism, I think, and Conde Nasty Team Bogue
did not escape that. So like that's that's what I'll say,
Like things did change at that point, but until then,
I absolutely had the freedom and the trust and the
independence to run the magazine the way I wanted to
(23:59):
run it.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
When you started at teen Vogue, were there, Like, what
was the most surprising thing you learned about the generation
that you were there to sort of serve your core audience.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I guess I think the most surprising thing and like
the biggest learning that I'm taking into whatever I do
next is that much like millennials felt underestimated by the
incorrect assumptions that people would make about them, it's the
same thing is true for gen Z and there's so
much there are so many assumptions, like the way that
we grew up, and then compare it to the way
(24:35):
that they grow up, Like we had maybe one screen
in our hand at all times, but they have like five, right,
Like they it's just like amplified the platforms that they have,
whatever they have access to, it's just the information and
content they're being inundated with on a daily basis is
far beyond even what millennials grew up with, that fire
hose of content. So despite that, despite digital and social
(24:59):
addiction and spending too much time online, what I've learned
is that gen Z and young people actually really crave
in person community and connection. And millennials and gen Z
have been faulted for the death of print media, but
they're actually really into print actually, and they're really into
(25:21):
analog because now vinyls outsell CDs and print magazines are
making a comeback. And just zines in general, like getting together,
whether you're high school or college friends and making a
zine is back and I love that. Like this like
offline movement, and I think that's that's been accelerated by COVID.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
I certainly take for granted that I was at a
very different place in my life, my career financially where
I was living during COVID, But man if I was
in my teens or twenties with a three year disruption
of that magnitude, it really would change the rest of
my life.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to be studying
this for the rest of us our lives because we
just we've never seen anything like it, and we're still
understanding the impact.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Why do you think that we're so quick as a
society to criticize the next generation instead of encouraging them.
Are we are we? Like? Is it just a thing
that's in vogue to kind of make fun of the
next generation or is this like is this like something
that an uncle would do where it's like encouragement through critique,
even though it doesn't feel like encouragement, right.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Right, that's true. Actually it is very Indian way that
people critique young people, very much like my dad. I
think it's it's just like, honestly, I think it's human nature,
like older generations feel some type of way about younger generations.
Like that makes sense to me, it's I mean, the
gap is also a lack of dialogue, like not actually
(26:49):
talking to young people or knowing what teens are into,
but like reading about it or seeing headlines like of
course you're going to make false assumptions or big picture
assumptions based on all of that, But that's also an
area of opportunities, intergenerational dialogue. I think that we need
more of that and that we can all learn more
from each other.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I'm just thinking now in terms of like for our
older listeners, yes, and I don't mean that disparagingly, but like,
maybe you're driving to work, your kids are in high
school or maybe even college. What are the things that
you saw I guess during your tenure eighteen vogue, but
even now, because you obviously your head and your heart
(27:31):
very close to the ground on this stuff that gen
Z and gen Alpha are dealing with as they come
of age, Like, what are they dealing with in this
moment that sets them apart, that genuinely sets them apart
from other generations. The two things I think of, obviously
are like AI and digitization.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yes exactly. AI is such a big one, and I
feel like, right, we could spend an entire podcast, multiple podcasts,
just talking about the impact of that. I don't know
if you've seen the stats of like how many people
have like spoken to a chatbot or asked it for
personal advice, or started to think about it as a
personal connection rather than a robot or whatever it might be.
(28:10):
I think two things can be true, right, Like everything
I said about analog and in person is true. It's
also true that because of the digital access they have,
Like these generations are really lonely, right, they are really lonely.
There is a degree of them being in their bedrooms
looking on their phones rather than going out to the library.
But these are things that are not like it's not
(28:32):
because of them or who they are the generation, Like
this is institutional. Something we spoke a lot about at
teen Vogue was the decline of third spaces and third
spaces where you can meet up or just like meet
strangers and talk to people, public spaces that are not
related to capitalism and anyway, they just like they don't
exist anymore in America, Like it's everything has a capitalist connection.
(28:56):
Like people actually used to spend time at the library
or go to a nonprofit or something, but it's just
like it doesn't happen anymore. So I'm really worried about
the loneliness that I think a lot of young people feel.
And I'm also a big advocate for mental health, and
I think that because they're dealing with these challenges that
(29:17):
we've never dealt with before, like a once in a
century pandemic. The mental health crisis among young people is
so real, and that is a big concern of mine too.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Okay, I want to go back to the teen Vogue example,
because it's very rare to be able to talk about
generational stuff, especially generational shifts, and have somebody who served
in that position, so to the extent that you are comfortable,
I am so curious. I ask this by the way
of friends of mine who are Hollywood executives, but their
(29:50):
background is Hollywood execs is a lot more traditional for
what you might expect from somebody who might run a
production company or a TV studio. Were there conscious choices
that you made in terms of the team that you
hired at teen Vogue when you did bring new people on,
whether it was fashion coverage, culture, identity, politics, advocacy, like
(30:10):
you were bringing people in in their twenties and thirties.
We often talk about wanting to staff up in a
way that reflects our reality both generationally, but then also
you and I are two Brown Americans who you know
whose upbringing is very different than friends of ours who
don't share the family structure or whatever that we had.
(30:34):
And I know the biggest criticism that I've always heard
when I've been in a position to hire people, and
I do think this is bullshit. Just for the record,
is there aren't enough people in the pipeline to hire. Now,
that might be true. I'm not suggesting that you hire
somebody with four credits to be your showrunner. But if
you're not finding enough people, you're just not looking hard enough. So, like, yes,
(30:55):
you might need to pay in the case of casting
a show, you might need to pay a casting director
an extra month or two of a salary to find
the right people. But they definitely exist. And so since
you were like literally the person who was in charge
of all of this, what was your experience with all
of that, how did you bring new people in and
how did you find them?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, that is a cross industry aphorism that there's just
not the people aren't in the pipeline. Like that's so
true for journalism and media too, and it's complete bullshit.
So that's like one of the biggest responsibilities of this
job that I think I took seriously, Like it was
a really cool opportunity to be able to build a team,
and I made sure that I was intentional in interviewing
(31:39):
candidates across backgrounds like racial, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic. If
you want to really like run an outlet that is
representative or reflective of a generation or young people. Then
you have to take all of that into account. So
I'm really proud because I found very, very talented and
deserving people and build a team of black, brown, Asian, trans,
(32:04):
non binary people. And it's also like a personal mission
of mine, and this is similar to what we did
it now this to prove to the rest of media
and mainstream media that a diverse newsroom is actually a plus.
It's a benefit. You're going to reach more audiences. There's
totally a business argument for it as well. But you
will do you will produce better work than you will
(32:26):
with a less diverse newsroom, and so that was very
important to me in building the team that I did.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I'm going to ask you a question that sounds like
I'm a right winger, but I'm going to ask it
in this way because I know a lot of people
believe this. So how do you hire such a diverse
workforce and still appeal to everybody? Ah?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yes, here's the thing. I don't know if Tembogue needs
to appeal to everybody. I think that it needs to
reflect its audience and be true to its audience, and
that audience is young people. This is something that would
come up at now this in teen Vogue, which is
like what's your point of view? Do you have a
political point of view? Like what is it? And my
(33:08):
answer is always like we reflect what our audience thinks,
is interested in, is passionate about, is discussing, and if
you just like look at pe research data, like every
nee generation is more socially progressive, Like take politics and
parties parties out of it. Every new generation is more
socially progressive than the previous generation. I think demographics like
(33:31):
actual progress. There are a lot of reasons for that.
And so what I would say is like, I'm just
covering what I know young people care about, which is
racial justice, which is equality and gay rights and marriage
and the climate crisis because they're living in it every
single day. And I think, like it's it was never about,
oh I want to elevate democrats all the time, Like
(33:52):
there's that was never part of it. It was just
about staying true to our audience. And so of course
there are young conservatives and people who feel differently or
who may not be socially progressive, and no, we don't
want to alienate them on purpose by any means. But
what this new media and new media leadership lends I
(34:13):
think is about is not believing in false equivalencies anymore.
And I think like I learned this from John Stewart, right,
and I like the New York Times and what they've
done in the Trump era and the ways that they've
been disappointing. There Israel Gaza coverage. It's just like, sometimes
both sides are not the same, and you need to
again coming back to the core mission of a journalist
(34:36):
is to report on the world around you accurately, to
tell the truth, to break new information and stories out
of a sense of duty or false equivalency or oh,
we want to reach a broad audience, we want to
reach all Americans. Like, that's not it. If telling the
truth accurately is alienating a part of America that doesn't
that's not your problem. I mean is it's all of
(34:58):
our problems. But that shouldn't end packed your work or
the way that you do it. Journalism is journalism. And
another thing that I think I was kind of surprised
people didn't understand this. They would talk to me and
they'd be like, how do you know what teens are
into and what young people are into. I'm like, they
write for us, like literally, they are our contributors. We
love having college and high school students submit. It just
(35:19):
gets back to what I've been saying a lot, which
is like, you need to listen to them. You need
to give them a platform to talk about their perspectives.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
If you had to describe your highest high at teen Vogue,
is there a moment that comes to mind?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
I mean my first cover, I put my tree Rama
Krishnan on the cover and this is this is when
it was season two of Never how ever, so it
was just starting to rise in popularity. It hadn't fully
blown up yet. I'm so proud of that, and I'm
so proud of all the South Asians that I put
on the covers over the years. That's the first thing
that comes to mind. Absolutely. But attending the met Gala
(35:56):
was pretty cool, which I got to do once.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
So yeah, that's on my bucket list as well, which
I've told you privately too. I'm like, I'm getting more
into fashion in the last couple of years. Yes, I
would like to go to Luella one day.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yes, that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I want to go back to one of the generational
questions that I had for you, which is when you
continued to build the brand, and obviously you had the
trust and the buy in, So this is not maybe
the first year or two, but coming out of the pandemic,
you have your team in place, you have your relationship
with your executive team. Were there specific you'd mentioned October
(36:33):
seventh being a particularly tricky conversation to have with folks.
In addition to that, what specific stories or topics that
you maybe thought were no brainers to your core audience
to cover as editor in chief turned out to maybe
raise some flags with senior leadership or required more nuanced
(36:53):
conversation than you were expecting, And how did you handle those?
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, I mean, I mean the first thing that comes
to mind is October seventh and what we saw the
aftermath of what we saw on college campuses across America.
It was one of the biggest stories, right Like it
was like the New York Times was constantly reporting on
what's going on at Columbia or Harvard or everything else,
and guess what, they would rarely do it from the
(37:17):
perspective of the students. It was always like the big,
big picture, like administration or president is doing this. But
when that happened. We did our best to cover it again,
like as accurately as possible, to give platforms to underrepresented journalists.
There were so many Palestinian college journalists who had trouble
placing pieces. I'm like, these are the first people that
(37:39):
you should be talking to about the impact of GAZA
and what's going on. We hired them, we commissioned them,
we had them do good work for us. And what
I was surprised at was the amount of backlash that
we got externally from people who said we were covering
it too much. And I was like, it is one
of the biggest stories in America, in the world right now,
(38:01):
Like what happened on college campuses and with protests about
Gaza and how administrations responded to them was legitimately a
huge newsworthy story. Who should be all over that story?
Teen Vogue should be all over that story? Like it
just made sense to me that we would do that.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Do you feel that you succeeded or is it like
any other job where you had to Yeah, you succeeded
some of the time you had to say okay, fine,
and other times I think.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
For two solid years twenty three and twenty twenty five,
I succeeded, and we succeeded. Like I'm very, very proud
of the work that we did during that time, and
I just I've spoken to so many people who were
like teen Vogue was doing the work that the Washington
Post and the New York Times should be doing. So
thank you for publishing this, because so many other places
(38:53):
wouldn't publish this, or wouldn't take it, or wouldn't pay
a writer for it. That will always be a huge
accomplishment to me.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
That's awesome. That's great to hear that you felt like
you were able to really highlight those voices in a
way that was truthful to what was happening on college
campuses instead of kind of taking the cable news version
of that just obviously much more vitriolic.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean it was hard. I'll be
completely honest, it was very hard. I faced a lot
of external backlash and some internal backlash over it, so
we had to hold our ground. But what it was
so surprising to me, and this is like zoom back
from teen Vogue and Conde Nast, just like having worked
in political and cultural media for the last eighteen years,
(39:38):
I've never seen anything like the reaction to coverage of
this issue post October seventh. I mean, external groups that
are supposedly about stopping anti Semitism, but they're really about
stopping anybody of being critical of the Israeli government would
organize these massive email campaigns targeting me and my staff,
(40:00):
and they would flood our inboxes, and they would flood
corporate leadership's inboxes, and then they started emailing our advertisers
and saying our advertisers should drop us. Like the coordination
of these campaigns was so intense. I mean, I'm sure
you've seen it too, Like some of these groups targeted
the college students themselves, right, And just the whole problem
that we had with the conflation of anti Semitism with
(40:22):
criticism of the Israeli government. It was a huge problem
for everybody. Right, it's still a problem. It's still an issue,
and that was very much true for teen Vogue and
myself as well. Well.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I'm glad you highlighted it and hopefully it leads to,
you know, a more respectful conversation about it, which it
sounds like it did at least the pieces that I
know I remember reading, especially the pieces that trended on
teen Vogue around that time were like people who only
got their news from the you know, corporate New York Times,
these sort of sources. I think we have their eyes
(40:55):
open quite a bit about like, oh, look at this
interesting first hand account. Yeah, people who are on the
college campuses.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, exactly, Well, I want to look at what's next
for you.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
November third of twenty twenty five, Vogue announced that, after
twenty two years as its own title, that teen Vogue
was going to be folded into Vogue dot Com as
part of a merger, and that you'd be stepping aways
editor in chief. And to be totally honest, it was
a shock to a lot of people who love the brand,
(41:24):
love and respect your work. Okay, so it was a
shock to you too. So so did you did you
know beforehand or did they just they told you the
day of and they told me.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
The day of it? Oh yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
And this is like when a TV show gets canceled.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, yeah, honestly, no, they told me like thirty minutes
before the press release went out. Yeah, literally, literally, cal
it was. It was brutal, Like, I just be honest,
it was brutal. No, I had no idea, I had
no idea. It was a real It was really abrupt
and a real shame. I think the way that it
went down, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Gosh, and finding out, I mean, that's kind of that's
a tough position for you to be in, because I
assume you are. I mean, just to be honest, there's
the personal emotional thing of a job that you love,
that you care deeply for, but then you're also managing
people who you have to have conversations with. What was
your sense of why? Right? There's a lot of downsizing
(42:22):
in big media companies to begin with, and a lot
of a lot of conglomeration as well. We're looking at
Warner Brothers, Paramount, Netflix right now, Right, was this a
version of that?
Speaker 2 (42:36):
One thing that's unfortunate about the state of our world
in the industry is that media layoffs are so common.
So you're right about Paramount and the consolidation that we're
seeing going on in other industries. I think a big
question that has faced Conde asked and Hurst and any
legacy or magazine dominant companies as how do you adapt
(42:58):
to the digital age? And so you know, they said
that reasons were financial, and I think that that's partially true,
but I also think big picture, we're in this era
of rolling back DEI and walking away from anything that
might be seen as too political or controversial, and I
think that that have to be part of it too.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Hollywood especially has no shortage of examples of shows that
were either greenlit or kept on the air while losing
money because somebody was passionate about it, or they believed
in it, or knew that the perspective of the particular
show hadn't been seen before and was important. I mean,
one of the biggest examples, and I'm a huge fan
of the show obviously, is Seinfeld, which didn't do well
(43:42):
the first couple of seasons, but the executives were like, no,
this is a very funny show with a very unique perspective. Yes,
So I think it's bullshit to take that away. Also,
what I was really getting at too with how you
dealt with leadership is I only had one show that
I sold that was on the air. When my show
Sunny Side got came canceled by NBC, I think we
had like an hour and a half before they full
(44:06):
deadline one more time. But it was one of those
things where they literally in the morning were like everything
is so funny. We have your back. We have your back.
Don't worry. We have your back. Don't worry about last
night's ratings. You know, we're giving this ten weeks before
we before we have to make a decision. You guys
are so funny. Literally in the morning, okay, And then
(44:28):
three hours later there was a phone call that's like, hey,
you're getting canceled. Anyway, The point of all this is
that Joel Kim Booster, who is hilarious, who I love
very much, He's very funny, he was in our cast
and we happened to be canceled on Columbus Day, okay,
and oh god, and just for background, like so the
(44:48):
show Sunny Side was the most ethnically diverse show in
the history of network TV, which I was very proud of.
Our time slot was replaced by the new revamp of
Will and Grace, so Joel tweets. After it became a
news story, Joel was said something like NBC canceled the
most diverse show in the history of network TV on
(45:08):
Columbus Day and replaced it with an all white show.
You just can't make this up. And I immediately got
a call from NBC's PR department because I'm the co creator, right,
and I'm an excited producer. They're like, hey, you need
to talk to Joel Kim Booster about he has to
pull that tweet down. And I said, I'm happy to
talk to Joel Kim Booster, but can you please let
(45:29):
me know what it is about the tweet that's not
accurate so that I can let him know. They were like, well,
it's just the tweet is not it's not a good tweet.
Like no, no, no, totally I know. And in my
head too, you know, obviously is the like, fuck off,
you just cancel our show. I'm obviously not telling my
I'm not policing my actor because if I'll read it
(45:49):
back to you, everything he wrote is factual. You did
cancel the most diverse show on Columbus Day and replace
it with an all white show. And then I was
like yes, yeah. I was like, you can called Joel
if you want to, right, And everybody was scared of
Joel can Booster, so nobody else called and I just
I sort of laughed about it. So I also was
wondering if you had stories like that with some of
(46:10):
the more passionate members of your team.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah. I actually I love that story so much, and
I'll tell you why, because the exact same thing happened
to me, not with one of my employees, well actually
with one of my employees. But one story that comes
to mind is right before the twenty twenty four election,
I published an op ed from me written by me
about how catastrophic Biden and Harris had been for Gaza,
(46:35):
but arguing that Trump would be even worse, and putting
all the points of like what he has said about it,
what Jared Kushner has said about developing beachfront property in Gaza,
and all the things right to make the argument that, like,
it's really important even if you're mad at Biden and Harris,
understandably so to think about this when you're casting your vote.
(46:55):
Got a lot of backlash for that op ed, and
a lot of people, and I won't say like who
specifically internally or externally, but I'll say some very powerful
people had a conversation with me about it, and they're like,
so it's a bad that you wrote and posted about
on Instagram? Do you think that was the wisest idea?
(47:19):
And my response was, is there anything in there that's inaccurate?
And they couldn't say yes, Like I just kept asking.
They kept trying to dance around it, like basically like,
maybe you shouldn't have published this because of the reaction
that it caused. And my guiding principle is just like,
is there anything in there that is inaccurate? And there
would just be a pause and they'd be like, not
(47:40):
that I know of, and I'm like, thank yo, Then
what are we doing here? Like why are we talking?
But that happened to me and then absolutely one of
the challenges I'd say of managing teen Vogue is that
we do have such a wonderfully passionate, vocal, socially connected
staff who don't give a fuck about what they're posting.
(48:02):
And that definitely happened after But I guess I'll give
credit to Conde for this. Nobody called me about people's
posts after we got laid off, so I think they
understood that we could say, you know what we wanted
to say.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Oh good, that's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they understood. They
understood what the challenges were.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
One of the things that I loved about Teen Vogue
was that it was kind of the last one standing
of all the teen magazines that so many of us
grew up with, like they all went at a print
or offline, but teen Vogue stayed, and it stayed because
it was always true to its audience.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
When the Teen Vogue news broke, I got tons of
texts you are so well respected and well loved, and
I know we have a bunch of mutual friends. But
these texts were also from people who just knew that
you and I knew each other, saying, you know, how
can we support Varsha? This is super exciting for her
next steps. Like everything was always viewed positively, and I
(48:57):
obviously didn't want to like blow up your spot the
day of remember texting Casey your husband to be like, hey,
how can everybody support Versa? So now that it's been
a little time and you have a little perspective, what
are you most excited about for your next steps or
the future?
Speaker 2 (49:11):
That's so nice to hear, Thank you. I think I'm
excited to take on different projects. I absolutely want to
stay in the media journalism space and working with the
young audiences, but you know, I'm also excited about the
possibility of branching out to other areas as well. But yeah,
that's like I'm still very much in this liminal phase
(49:32):
where I'm figuring things out, But the exciting thing is
there is a lot of opportunity and I think, like,
that's my final optimistic take of this period of history
is like the conversations that I've had since getting laid
off show me that as dire as things are right now,
there are a lot of people who want to fund
and support real journalism and young people, and we just
(49:56):
got to take advantage of that. So that's my plan.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Thanks for doing this versa, of course, that was so fun.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Here we go again as a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Snaffoo Media in association with New Metric Media. Our
executive producers are me Calpen Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino,
Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan
tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our
producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory
(50:29):
Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt Gosson, Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline
Johnson and Meghan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Basner, Isaac Dunham,
Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart podcasts, but
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks for listening. Everybody,
(50:52):
tell your friends, write a review. All of this helps.
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Calpen
In the nineteen sixties, it was the hippie baby boomers
who really stressed out their parents what their lack of direction,
their love of psychedelic drugs, and their obsession with things
like beads and flowers and world peace. In the twenty tens,
it was millennials, also known as the MEMI Me generation,
with their avocado toasts, their inability to move out of
(00:23):
their parents' homes, and their supposed sense of entitlement, which
society blamed on them getting too many trophies as kids,
not for winning, mind you, but just for showing up.
Beyond these broad generalizations, my point is this, every generation
has its haters, baby Boomers, millennials, now gen Z, whichever
generation is in their twenties, is walking around with older
(00:45):
people rolling their eyes at them. And I know this
because I'm no longer in my twenties and I'd definitely
roll my eyes at them.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
If your generation or older generations feels that way about
younger millennials. Gen Z takes that again to an even
higher level of setting boundaries in the workplace, sometimes unrealistic boundaries.
I would say, as the manager.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Today, I am speaking with Varsha Sharma. She's a journalist, editor,
fashion icon, very kind, very smart person and as you
may know, the former editor in chief of teen Vogue.
For years, Varsha has helped define how older generations see
gen Z and how gen Z sees itself. And she's
(01:29):
here to help me understand. Is this generational pecking order
a cyclical tendency that just sort of happens, or is
society scrutinizing gen Z in a particular way because they're
legitimately growing up in a way that no generation ever
has before.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Here we Go again again again.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Hey, I'm Cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Here we go? Can you guys hear me?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Okay, was there delay?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Or it's okay, It's fine?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Now great? Hi?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Cal?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Oh good? How are you?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I'm Versus Sharma, and I am a journalist and most
recently the editor in chief of Team Vogue.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
All right, so, for the past like fifteen years you've
been working as a journalist, and not just any kind
of journalist you've worked at. Now, this, which is where
you and I first met, is that.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yes, right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, you reminded me of after we became friends. Yeah,
but you're not any kind of journalist, as I was saying,
you were the editor in chief of teen Vogue. You
won an Edward Morrow Award. So I guess the question
behind all the intro is like, what motivated you to
pursue journalism to begin with? And was was there like
(03:02):
a singular moment like I've got this weird moment when
I was in eighth grade. Combination of like being bullied,
playing the tin man in The Wizard of Oz and
seeing Mississippi Massala for the first time. All of that
codified to be like you should be an actor. Do
you have a moment like that in your life?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yes. Like many millennials, my political and journalistic awakening was
the war in Iraq, the beginning of the war in
Iraq with Bush and I remember I was fifteen. Well,
it's a combination of nine to eleven because I was
in high school when nine to eleven happened, and immediately
an hour after the attack, some of my classmates were
(03:38):
racist towards me because of the color of my skin.
But then fast forward to two thousand and three and
the lead up to the war in Iraq, I was
a teenager and as part of our Amnesty International chapter
at my high school, we organized like a vigil for
Iraqi civilians because we disagreed with the war and the premise,
(03:59):
and I didn't understand how I, as a teenager, could
see through the administration's lies and like mainstream journalism wasn't
being skeptical enough of Colin Powell's you know, assertions about
yellow uranium, whatever it might be. I was shocked, and
I was like, wow, the people in charge don't get it,
or they're completely fine with this march towards war that
(04:21):
is going to end up killing a lot of people.
So I mean, I was I was always interested in
writing from a young age. I didn't know if I
wanted it to be fiction or nonfiction, but it was
it was that moment that I was like, I want
to be a truth teller and I want to be
a journalist.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So I'm a bit older than you, and so my
Iraq war was your bush's dad's Iraq wars. There you go, yes,
So it was like, yeah, here we are talking about
cycles in generational cycles, and it's like, oh, it was
just a different Iraq War. Yeah, it was like the
same family.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, And I was in speech and debate in high
school and I remember like giving one of the speech
about the war in Iraq, and again as a teenager,
I was like, part of this is like clearly related
to Bush Senior and whatever relationship they have and the
legacy and all of that, and like, I just don't
get how other people are not seeing this or talking
(05:15):
about it at a high level.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
When you were, when you were skeptical about that and
looking into it. This was like way pre social media, right,
So there weren't were there any clips of what was
actually happening on the ground and the horrors that our
government was responsible for.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
That's a great question. Definitely not on social there was
no social media. I remember I remember watching Bombs over
bag Dad on CNN, like that was that was the
footage that I remember seeing of us A bombing Iraq,
But nothing like we see now. The other thing I'll
say quickly, and this is why I loved your work
at The Daily Show so much, is that you know
(05:50):
John Stewart of that era was definitely like I was like, oh,
this is the guy who's actually telling it like it
is so that inspired the journalistic kind of approach that
I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
That's awesome. So, Okay, you're a millennial yourself, And part
of this is just kind of looking at this generational
thing of like, Okay, when we were kids, you know,
every parent is like, you guys have it easy. When
when I was a child, I had to do this,
this and this, and the chip on my shoulder about
some of this also is like I'm not so old,
which my cousins who are my age and even a
(06:23):
little younger, often remind me that, like they think it's
weird that my personality is kind of sophomoric. They're like, like,
you don't. I just think it comes with being an artist, right,
Like you have a lot of friends who are Any
friend who's an artist is like, oh, you're just like
your personality is a little bit different than your friend
who maybe has some more traditional job or a more
(06:43):
traditional career. Or I also don't have kids, so there's
just kind of a different My day to day is
very different. But I do remember. This leads into the
question that I was about to ask you. I do
remember there are things where I'm like, oh, I found myself.
This is a few years ago. But I found myself
being like, oh, this generation just doesn't work as hard
(07:04):
as our generation did. And then I tried to like
distill what I meant by that, and I realized it
was two things. One was like, you know, we used
to have to work for free for everything, which meant
that you would have other jobs. Obviously it was very
restrictive based on whether your parents could give you money.
But all of the entertainment internships that I had were
(07:24):
for free, and so I would have other jobs to
pay for this free work that I was doing for people. Yes,
and you would be like verbally abused, just constantly, and
I'm glad that. So I'll give you the positive and
the criticism. The criticism was like nobody wants to work
for free, right, And I like didn't see the own
irony in what I was saying. But then on the
(07:46):
flip side, I was like, thank god, these kids are
standing up for themselves and like not willing to be
verbally abused at least in the free work that they
don't want to do. So it's just like a funny.
I obviously have checked myself since on both of these things. Yeah,
but so you're a bit younger than me, you're a
millennial yourself. What were some of the big critiques you
remember hearing about millennials when you were coming of age
(08:09):
and then was there like like sort of like my
thing of like they're lazy, they don't want to get
yelled at. Was there like a particularly egregious, ridiculous stereotype
that you remember.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's such a good question. I mean, I feel like
for millennials it's like, oh, like we we killed everything fun,
or like we spent too much, we spend too much
money on our avocado toast in our coffee, and that's
why we can't own homes, which is like such bullshit. Yeah,
among other things. But I feel like for for millennials,
it was definitely the common misconceptions of like, yeah, they
(08:39):
don't want to work as hard. Oh, they all want
to be creatives or actors. But this is taken to
an even more intense degree with gen Z and younger
because now it's like one in five kids says they
want to be a creator as a career, which like
that's interesting, but you know there are different sides to that.
But I think, yeah, just that like we're self absorbed,
where two in our phones, we're too much spending too
(09:03):
much online, too much on the internet, not enough time
in person. I feel like those are those were pretty
standard ones that I remember immediately, and I think as
a champion of millennial leaders especially like I think that
the big pluses that we bring are like empathy, right,
like empathy in the workplace, empathy and leadership. And then
this will get into the generational divides again if your
(09:27):
generation or older generations feels that way about younger millennials.
Gen Z takes that again to an even higher level
of setting boundaries in the workplace. U sometimes unrealistic boundaries,
I would say, as a manager, and it's it's totally
like there's there's a fine line between being like, yes,
they should stand up for themselves and what they deserve
(09:49):
between that and like, okay, you're acting a little entitled,
like totally, you're you're you are lucky to have a
millennial as a manager versus a boomer and you're maybe
you don't know though, because you've never had a boom
er manage you, so then you just have nothing to
compare it to.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, I do guess lectures at colleges a lot, and
that's a thing that comes up often, which is like
you can tell there's someone who's like, had an internship
for a summer and they feel very entitled. They're like,
you know, I mean within two years, I want to
be a VP at this company, and what do I
do to blah blah blah. I was like, oh, actually,
that's I would not set that as your goal, right,
I certainly wouldn't tie your happiness to that goal within
(10:26):
two years. Yeah, but if you have a plan about
how you can do that, give yourself a five year
plan and figure it out.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
No, it's a real thing. I've managed a lot of
millennials and gen z and the idea that like you
should get a promotion and a title change and a
salary increase every year is so real. I'm like, guys,
look at the economy, Like, come on.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
When we were at the White House, I remember distinctly,
so my job was was the President's youth outreach person,
and I had this one me that made me feel
so old, but I really appreciated getting checked on this.
So I was probably when I was thirty two, I
think roughly when I had that job, So like I
(11:10):
wasn't young, but I wasn't old. And the President used
to joke with me. He's like, you know, if you
have gray hair, you can't have this job anymore. And
I was like, I don't have gray hair.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So some people go great early.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
No, I know, I know. He was just he'd like
to throw a little bit of fun shade. But I
walked into this meeting one day and it was with
a group of young organizers who were really agitated that
the president was going through a legislative process for something
that they wanted done. And you know, I worked in
the first two years of the Obama administration, so it
(11:42):
was before a lot of executive orders. It was when
he was still trying to get things done through Congress,
which takes a really long time, and it takes time
by design because the type of democracy that we have
up until recently obviously is designed to be slow, and
that the fact that it's slow is a benchmark of
a healthy democracy and all of that. So they were
(12:02):
basically like telling me that Obama needed to do more
and move faster, and it was a note well taken,
but I also pushed back and said, like, you guys
really need more patients, and they were like why, I'm like,
because change is not. I said something cheesy like change
is not a light switch. It's not like you send
a tweet and like immediately it gets done right right,
(12:22):
And it was a little belittling, to be honest, I
recognize that now. And the person on the one of
the kids on the other at the other end of
the table just goes, why, like what do you mean,
because why do we need to have patience?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
It was like, because that's just not how the system works. Like, So,
just to let you know, I always grew up with
a cell phone. I always grew up with the internet.
Information is available to me from the time I was born,
literally with the tap of a finger. Yes, and there's
nobody else who's going to be born who doesn't have that.
(12:57):
So I don't think it matters that I don't have patience.
I think you guys are the ones who need to
be a little bit quicker about this. And I was
just sort of floored. I was like, first of all,
like this kid is right, Like she one hundred percent
is saying the truth. The second thing is the nature
of our democracy is not going to change with three
(13:17):
branches and things taking a long time, but there must
be a way here. To harness that amazing energy that
generation has and instead of turning it into complacency, which
unfortunately I think we see a lot more of now
because of the way that things play out. But like,
there's got to be a way to harness that into
something incredible. And you've certainly seen like success stories that
came out of that too, But you just reminded me
(13:39):
of that, because.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, it's so real. I feel like I, for the
most part, I really applaud, embrace, elevate young people's inpatients,
and I think a lot of the work that I've
done is trying to put that into context for other
audiences and generations. But it makes sense, like what you're
saying about how they were born into this world with
instant access to basically everything, but also the way that
(14:01):
they watched older generations screw screw up, and the fact
that because of older generations and what they did now
they have twelve years to solve the climate crisis, right, Like,
they truly are running out of time on a number
of fronts because of what previous generations did. So then
I'm like, yeah, I respect the impatients, I get it.
I think it totally makes sense and the adults in
(14:24):
charge weren't doing what they were supposed to do, so
why not give young people a chance?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah, and I'm I'm I'm also like very excited to
see who the validators become in the world, like politically,
And this goes back to actually the part of the
thing I wanted to ask you. So that same time
where I got called out in the White House for
by that group of young people, one of the biggest
(14:51):
validation points that I remember the Comm's team pointing to
for young people was teen Vogue, and it was the
kind of thing like I wasn't allowed to do very
much right. I was basically a mid level White House aid.
Any time I spoke or wrote something, I had to
use talking points. I wasn't allowed to use the skill
(15:11):
set that I had. That's what I signed up for.
I'm not lamenting that, I'm just saying that was the reality.
So there were very few places that we would look
to to say who's actually doing it right and who
has the impact in teen Vogue was one of those
places that was slightly to the left of the mainstream
Democratic Party, which meant that it was very helpful oftentimes
(15:32):
for an article to be in teen Vogue that was
like pushing right from the left because it created the
space for politicians to act. So what I'm curious about,
because we haven't explicitly talked about this, I know that
version of teen Vogue from like when I was there,
when I was when I was in government, and obviously
having been a fan because they were generally kind to
me for movies and things. When you came into teen Vogue,
(15:55):
it was twenty twenty one, yes, So what do you
recall the brand looking like and really like feeling like
to you? Yeah, and how would you describe your first
day if you remember your first day?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about that in
alone time. That's a great question. Well, what I'll say
about the time coming into it was I was, like you,
like definitely in twenty sixteen or twenty fourteen, twenty sixteen
and beyond, so end of Obama going into Trump. Such
a fan of the way that teen Bogue was reporting
on politics amongst everything else, and have been a long
(16:29):
time just like fan of that kind of journalism right,
serving young audiences, actually reflecting what young people think, and
diving into it. So twenty twenty one, when I came
into the job, it was a little less than one
year since the murder of George Floyd and those nationwide
then international protests. Obviously, we were like smack in the
(16:49):
middle of the pandemic or just at the beginning of
the pandemic. So young people's lives, whether they were in
high school or college, were being severely disrupted. That was
a big part of it. So I came in at
a time where I was like, we need to be
listening to young people more than ever, because they truly
are having once in a lifetime, once in a century,
(17:10):
events happening to them that are happening to all of us,
but it's happening to them at such a critical, important
formative age, and they are going to need our help
and our council and whatever we can give them our advice,
if there we have any advice for surviving a pandemic.
So that was so important to me to reflect coming
into it. And I think I don't know that I
(17:31):
remember my very first day, but I remember the first
column that I wrote as editor in chief, and this
was like it was an instant idea that I had
when I came into It was about Darnella Frasier, who
was the seventeen year old girl who filmed towards Flord's murder.
And we would not have seen what happened if this
brave young teenager had not done what she did. And
(17:52):
to me, that was just like it was an example
of like what we ask young kids to do, what
we ask black people to shoulder, definitely black women. And
my thesis was like, this is what's happening, this is
what's shaping our world. Young people are now at the
forefront of the climate and racial justice movements. We need
to listen to them. Like that was like my number
(18:12):
one was just we need to listen to them. And
then I don't know if you remember. This is like
a little bit of media drama, but there was this
period where they appointed an editor in chief before me,
and that caused a controversy because this woman had anti
Asian and anti gay tweets. This is also the time
(18:32):
when those Asian hate crimes were happening because of COVID.
But like the Spa the spaw murders in Atlanta, like
right around that time.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
I don't remember this, Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
So Conde Nast appointed an editor in chief who had
these anti Asian and anti gay tweets from when she
was a teenager, and some people were like, everybody tweets
dumb stuff when they're a teenager. Give her a chance.
She's rehabilitated, she can do this. She can leave the
brand and another camp of people, which you know, I
(19:03):
can't most love as part of generally, I'm not saying
anything against this woman personally, was like, the editor in
chief of teen Vogue cannot be somebody who underestimates teens.
Like it's all about house like not talking down to them,
not underestimating them. And so that's that's how I ended
up getting the job, like out of that controversy. So
(19:24):
I also came into this time where like the teen
Vogue team was not happy with corporate leadership. I had
to build trust between that team and then rebuild trust
in the audience because the audience was also disappointed that
this set happened.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
How did you rebuild trust with the audience and how
did you get to know the audience going from obviously
knowing the brand to like to leading it.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I mean I knew some people on the team already,
which definitely helped. Like there were people I'd worked with
that past jobs. I feel like that was what was
so important to me in like that first year, but
definitely the first months of my job, it was just
listening and I think, like, this is this is the problem.
This is why I harp on about listening to young
people all the time, is because they are so often
ignored or written off that I don't think adults or
(20:09):
older people realize how powerful it is for them to
feel heard. And so that was my big thing coming
into teen Vogue and Conde. I was like, this team,
which is an amazing team of young people, do not
feel heard by corporate leadership, right, Like that was part
of the controversy. So it's my job to listen and
(20:29):
build bridges and try to bring them to the table
together and facilitate conversations and dialogue. And that's also true
externally with our audience. And I think the same reason
that I wrote that up ed or editor's letter about
Darnella Frasier, I wanted the audience to know Teen Vogue
is committed to these causes and this is the kind
(20:49):
of journalism that you're going to see under my leadership
as well.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Was it a conscious decision to both run pieces that
were kind of insightful, thoughtful, tough, and also oftentimes they
were in the same piece, but sometimes there were complementary
pieces that were like very inspiring. Right, you wouldn't read
(21:22):
teen Vogue and feel like nothing mattered. You would read
teen Vogue and feel like, wow, if that person did this.
I'm not saying I have to run out and join
a political campaign, but I just need to be mindful
of what my role in my community is. Like, how
do you do I assume this was on purpose?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yes, it was. It was absolutely intentional. That's like highlighting
like the solutions and the change makers and the people
actually creating impact in their communities is part of the
teen Bogue and now this DNA. That's some of my
favorite kind of journalism. So it was very intentional that, yeah,
we need to report on the world as it is,
(22:00):
and there's a lot of bleak stuff happening in the world,
but there are a lot of amazing people who were
trying to improve their communities and help each other, and
they need to be equally highlighted in our coverage as well. Yeah,
absolutely intentional.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
When you decided what to cover and what not to cover,
I can't imagine that's easy for any of my friends
who work in especially print journalism, since you had to
get to know a new leadership team while you're leading
people at the magazine. Were there were there cases where
there were stories that you wanted to cover that you
(22:35):
couldn't cover. Were there stories that were people encouraged you
to cover that you didn't think were relevant to your
audience or did you have kind of freedom within that
space to craft it the way that you wanted?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, I definitely had freedom to craft. There were definitely
pitches that I went nowhere, Pitches from leadership or external
people or elsewhere were like, maybe Team Bolks should think
about this, and I was like, no, that's not really
how young people feel or what they're thinking about. So
I'll do a polite pass on this. But I will
(23:09):
give credit to Conde Nast for, at least at the
beginning of my tenure, the way that they treated their
editors in chief was to allow them to be the
experts on their audiences and brands and really to let
them independently lead what that coverage looks like like that
that is one hundred percent. As time went on, I mean,
(23:34):
we I don't know how much we want to get.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Into this, but like as much as you want.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
I mean, October seventh, twenty twenty three changed everything for
media and journalism, I think, and Conde Nasty Team Bogue
did not escape that. So like that's that's what I'll say,
Like things did change at that point, but until then,
I absolutely had the freedom and the trust and the
independence to run the magazine the way I wanted to
(23:59):
run it.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
When you started at teen Vogue, were there, Like, what
was the most surprising thing you learned about the generation
that you were there to sort of serve your core audience.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I guess I think the most surprising thing and like
the biggest learning that I'm taking into whatever I do
next is that much like millennials felt underestimated by the
incorrect assumptions that people would make about them, it's the
same thing is true for gen Z and there's so
much there are so many assumptions, like the way that
we grew up, and then compare it to the way
(24:35):
that they grow up, Like we had maybe one screen
in our hand at all times, but they have like five, right,
Like they it's just like amplified the platforms that they have,
whatever they have access to, it's just the information and
content they're being inundated with on a daily basis is
far beyond even what millennials grew up with, that fire
hose of content. So despite that, despite digital and social
(24:59):
addiction and spending too much time online, what I've learned
is that gen Z and young people actually really crave
in person community and connection. And millennials and gen Z
have been faulted for the death of print media, but
they're actually really into print actually, and they're really into
(25:21):
analog because now vinyls outsell CDs and print magazines are
making a comeback. And just zines in general, like getting together,
whether you're high school or college friends and making a
zine is back and I love that. Like this like
offline movement, and I think that's that's been accelerated by COVID.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
I certainly take for granted that I was at a
very different place in my life, my career financially where
I was living during COVID, But man if I was
in my teens or twenties with a three year disruption
of that magnitude, it really would change the rest of
my life.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to be studying
this for the rest of us our lives because we
just we've never seen anything like it, and we're still
understanding the impact.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Why do you think that we're so quick as a
society to criticize the next generation instead of encouraging them.
Are we are we? Like? Is it just a thing
that's in vogue to kind of make fun of the
next generation or is this like is this like something
that an uncle would do where it's like encouragement through critique,
even though it doesn't feel like encouragement, right.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Right, that's true. Actually it is very Indian way that
people critique young people, very much like my dad. I
think it's it's just like, honestly, I think it's human nature,
like older generations feel some type of way about younger generations.
Like that makes sense to me, it's I mean, the
gap is also a lack of dialogue, like not actually
(26:49):
talking to young people or knowing what teens are into,
but like reading about it or seeing headlines like of
course you're going to make false assumptions or big picture
assumptions based on all of that, But that's also an
area of opportunities, intergenerational dialogue. I think that we need
more of that and that we can all learn more
from each other.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I'm just thinking now in terms of like for our
older listeners, yes, and I don't mean that disparagingly, but like,
maybe you're driving to work, your kids are in high
school or maybe even college. What are the things that
you saw I guess during your tenure eighteen vogue, but
even now, because you obviously your head and your heart
(27:31):
very close to the ground on this stuff that gen
Z and gen Alpha are dealing with as they come
of age, Like, what are they dealing with in this
moment that sets them apart, that genuinely sets them apart
from other generations. The two things I think of, obviously
are like AI and digitization.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yes exactly. AI is such a big one, and I
feel like, right, we could spend an entire podcast, multiple podcasts,
just talking about the impact of that. I don't know
if you've seen the stats of like how many people
have like spoken to a chatbot or asked it for
personal advice, or started to think about it as a
personal connection rather than a robot or whatever it might be.
(28:10):
I think two things can be true, right, Like everything
I said about analog and in person is true. It's
also true that because of the digital access they have,
Like these generations are really lonely, right, they are really lonely.
There is a degree of them being in their bedrooms
looking on their phones rather than going out to the library.
But these are things that are not like it's not
(28:32):
because of them or who they are the generation, Like
this is institutional. Something we spoke a lot about at
teen Vogue was the decline of third spaces and third
spaces where you can meet up or just like meet
strangers and talk to people, public spaces that are not
related to capitalism and anyway, they just like they don't
exist anymore in America, Like it's everything has a capitalist connection.
(28:56):
Like people actually used to spend time at the library
or go to a nonprofit or something, but it's just
like it doesn't happen anymore. So I'm really worried about
the loneliness that I think a lot of young people feel.
And I'm also a big advocate for mental health, and
I think that because they're dealing with these challenges that
(29:17):
we've never dealt with before, like a once in a
century pandemic. The mental health crisis among young people is
so real, and that is a big concern of mine too.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Okay, I want to go back to the teen Vogue example,
because it's very rare to be able to talk about
generational stuff, especially generational shifts, and have somebody who served
in that position, so to the extent that you are comfortable,
I am so curious. I ask this by the way
of friends of mine who are Hollywood executives, but their
(29:50):
background is Hollywood execs is a lot more traditional for
what you might expect from somebody who might run a
production company or a TV studio. Were there conscious choices
that you made in terms of the team that you
hired at teen Vogue when you did bring new people on,
whether it was fashion coverage, culture, identity, politics, advocacy, like
(30:10):
you were bringing people in in their twenties and thirties.
We often talk about wanting to staff up in a
way that reflects our reality both generationally, but then also
you and I are two Brown Americans who you know
whose upbringing is very different than friends of ours who
don't share the family structure or whatever that we had.
(30:34):
And I know the biggest criticism that I've always heard
when I've been in a position to hire people, and
I do think this is bullshit. Just for the record,
is there aren't enough people in the pipeline to hire. Now,
that might be true. I'm not suggesting that you hire
somebody with four credits to be your showrunner. But if
you're not finding enough people, you're just not looking hard enough. So, like, yes,
(30:55):
you might need to pay in the case of casting
a show, you might need to pay a casting director
an extra month or two of a salary to find
the right people. But they definitely exist. And so since
you were like literally the person who was in charge
of all of this, what was your experience with all
of that, how did you bring new people in and
how did you find them?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, that is a cross industry aphorism that there's just
not the people aren't in the pipeline. Like that's so
true for journalism and media too, and it's complete bullshit.
So that's like one of the biggest responsibilities of this
job that I think I took seriously, Like it was
a really cool opportunity to be able to build a team,
and I made sure that I was intentional in interviewing
(31:39):
candidates across backgrounds like racial, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic. If
you want to really like run an outlet that is
representative or reflective of a generation or young people. Then
you have to take all of that into account. So
I'm really proud because I found very, very talented and
deserving people and build a team of black, brown, Asian, trans,
(32:04):
non binary people. And it's also like a personal mission
of mine, and this is similar to what we did
it now this to prove to the rest of media
and mainstream media that a diverse newsroom is actually a plus.
It's a benefit. You're going to reach more audiences. There's
totally a business argument for it as well. But you
will do you will produce better work than you will
(32:26):
with a less diverse newsroom, and so that was very
important to me in building the team that I did.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I'm going to ask you a question that sounds like
I'm a right winger, but I'm going to ask it
in this way because I know a lot of people
believe this. So how do you hire such a diverse
workforce and still appeal to everybody? Ah?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yes, here's the thing. I don't know if Tembogue needs
to appeal to everybody. I think that it needs to
reflect its audience and be true to its audience, and
that audience is young people. This is something that would
come up at now this in teen Vogue, which is
like what's your point of view? Do you have a
political point of view? Like what is it? And my
(33:08):
answer is always like we reflect what our audience thinks,
is interested in, is passionate about, is discussing, and if
you just like look at pe research data, like every
nee generation is more socially progressive, Like take politics and
parties parties out of it. Every new generation is more
socially progressive than the previous generation. I think demographics like
(33:31):
actual progress. There are a lot of reasons for that.
And so what I would say is like, I'm just
covering what I know young people care about, which is
racial justice, which is equality and gay rights and marriage
and the climate crisis because they're living in it every
single day. And I think, like it's it was never about,
oh I want to elevate democrats all the time, Like
(33:52):
there's that was never part of it. It was just
about staying true to our audience. And so of course
there are young conservatives and people who feel differently or
who may not be socially progressive, and no, we don't
want to alienate them on purpose by any means. But
what this new media and new media leadership lends I
(34:13):
think is about is not believing in false equivalencies anymore.
And I think like I learned this from John Stewart, right,
and I like the New York Times and what they've
done in the Trump era and the ways that they've
been disappointing. There Israel Gaza coverage. It's just like, sometimes
both sides are not the same, and you need to
again coming back to the core mission of a journalist
(34:36):
is to report on the world around you accurately, to
tell the truth, to break new information and stories out
of a sense of duty or false equivalency or oh,
we want to reach a broad audience, we want to
reach all Americans. Like, that's not it. If telling the
truth accurately is alienating a part of America that doesn't
that's not your problem. I mean is it's all of
(34:58):
our problems. But that shouldn't end packed your work or
the way that you do it. Journalism is journalism. And
another thing that I think I was kind of surprised
people didn't understand this. They would talk to me and
they'd be like, how do you know what teens are
into and what young people are into. I'm like, they
write for us, like literally, they are our contributors. We
love having college and high school students submit. It just
(35:19):
gets back to what I've been saying a lot, which
is like, you need to listen to them. You need
to give them a platform to talk about their perspectives.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
If you had to describe your highest high at teen Vogue,
is there a moment that comes to mind?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
I mean my first cover, I put my tree Rama
Krishnan on the cover and this is this is when
it was season two of Never how ever, so it
was just starting to rise in popularity. It hadn't fully
blown up yet. I'm so proud of that, and I'm
so proud of all the South Asians that I put
on the covers over the years. That's the first thing
that comes to mind. Absolutely. But attending the met Gala
(35:56):
was pretty cool, which I got to do once.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
So yeah, that's on my bucket list as well, which
I've told you privately too. I'm like, I'm getting more
into fashion in the last couple of years. Yes, I
would like to go to Luella one day.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yes, that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I want to go back to one of the generational
questions that I had for you, which is when you
continued to build the brand, and obviously you had the
trust and the buy in, So this is not maybe
the first year or two, but coming out of the pandemic,
you have your team in place, you have your relationship
with your executive team. Were there specific you'd mentioned October
(36:33):
seventh being a particularly tricky conversation to have with folks.
In addition to that, what specific stories or topics that
you maybe thought were no brainers to your core audience
to cover as editor in chief turned out to maybe
raise some flags with senior leadership or required more nuanced
(36:53):
conversation than you were expecting, And how did you handle those?
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, I mean, I mean the first thing that comes
to mind is October seventh and what we saw the
aftermath of what we saw on college campuses across America.
It was one of the biggest stories, right Like it
was like the New York Times was constantly reporting on
what's going on at Columbia or Harvard or everything else,
and guess what, they would rarely do it from the
(37:17):
perspective of the students. It was always like the big,
big picture, like administration or president is doing this. But
when that happened. We did our best to cover it again,
like as accurately as possible, to give platforms to underrepresented journalists.
There were so many Palestinian college journalists who had trouble
placing pieces. I'm like, these are the first people that
(37:39):
you should be talking to about the impact of GAZA
and what's going on. We hired them, we commissioned them,
we had them do good work for us. And what
I was surprised at was the amount of backlash that
we got externally from people who said we were covering
it too much. And I was like, it is one
of the biggest stories in America, in the world right now,
(38:01):
Like what happened on college campuses and with protests about
Gaza and how administrations responded to them was legitimately a
huge newsworthy story. Who should be all over that story?
Teen Vogue should be all over that story? Like it
just made sense to me that we would do that.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Do you feel that you succeeded or is it like
any other job where you had to Yeah, you succeeded
some of the time you had to say okay, fine,
and other times I think.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
For two solid years twenty three and twenty twenty five,
I succeeded, and we succeeded. Like I'm very, very proud
of the work that we did during that time, and
I just I've spoken to so many people who were
like teen Vogue was doing the work that the Washington
Post and the New York Times should be doing. So
thank you for publishing this, because so many other places
(38:53):
wouldn't publish this, or wouldn't take it, or wouldn't pay
a writer for it. That will always be a huge
accomplishment to me.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
That's awesome. That's great to hear that you felt like
you were able to really highlight those voices in a
way that was truthful to what was happening on college
campuses instead of kind of taking the cable news version
of that just obviously much more vitriolic.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean it was hard. I'll be
completely honest, it was very hard. I faced a lot
of external backlash and some internal backlash over it, so
we had to hold our ground. But what it was
so surprising to me, and this is like zoom back
from teen Vogue and Conde Nast, just like having worked
in political and cultural media for the last eighteen years,
(39:38):
I've never seen anything like the reaction to coverage of
this issue post October seventh. I mean, external groups that
are supposedly about stopping anti Semitism, but they're really about
stopping anybody of being critical of the Israeli government would
organize these massive email campaigns targeting me and my staff,
(40:00):
and they would flood our inboxes, and they would flood
corporate leadership's inboxes, and then they started emailing our advertisers
and saying our advertisers should drop us. Like the coordination
of these campaigns was so intense. I mean, I'm sure
you've seen it too, Like some of these groups targeted
the college students themselves, right, And just the whole problem
that we had with the conflation of anti Semitism with
(40:22):
criticism of the Israeli government. It was a huge problem
for everybody. Right, it's still a problem. It's still an issue,
and that was very much true for teen Vogue and
myself as well. Well.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I'm glad you highlighted it and hopefully it leads to,
you know, a more respectful conversation about it, which it
sounds like it did at least the pieces that I
know I remember reading, especially the pieces that trended on
teen Vogue around that time were like people who only
got their news from the you know, corporate New York Times,
these sort of sources. I think we have their eyes
(40:55):
open quite a bit about like, oh, look at this
interesting first hand account. Yeah, people who are on the
college campuses.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, exactly, Well, I want to look at what's next
for you.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
November third of twenty twenty five, Vogue announced that, after
twenty two years as its own title, that teen Vogue
was going to be folded into Vogue dot Com as
part of a merger, and that you'd be stepping aways
editor in chief. And to be totally honest, it was
a shock to a lot of people who love the brand,
(41:24):
love and respect your work. Okay, so it was a
shock to you too. So so did you did you
know beforehand or did they just they told you the
day of and they told me.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
The day of it? Oh yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
And this is like when a TV show gets canceled.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, yeah, honestly, no, they told me like thirty minutes
before the press release went out. Yeah, literally, literally, cal
it was. It was brutal, Like, I just be honest,
it was brutal. No, I had no idea, I had
no idea. It was a real It was really abrupt
and a real shame. I think the way that it
went down, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Gosh, and finding out, I mean, that's kind of that's
a tough position for you to be in, because I
assume you are. I mean, just to be honest, there's
the personal emotional thing of a job that you love,
that you care deeply for, but then you're also managing
people who you have to have conversations with. What was
your sense of why? Right? There's a lot of downsizing
(42:22):
in big media companies to begin with, and a lot
of a lot of conglomeration as well. We're looking at
Warner Brothers, Paramount, Netflix right now, Right, was this a
version of that?
Speaker 2 (42:36):
One thing that's unfortunate about the state of our world
in the industry is that media layoffs are so common.
So you're right about Paramount and the consolidation that we're
seeing going on in other industries. I think a big
question that has faced Conde asked and Hurst and any
legacy or magazine dominant companies as how do you adapt
(42:58):
to the digital age? And so you know, they said
that reasons were financial, and I think that that's partially true,
but I also think big picture, we're in this era
of rolling back DEI and walking away from anything that
might be seen as too political or controversial, and I
think that that have to be part of it too.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Hollywood especially has no shortage of examples of shows that
were either greenlit or kept on the air while losing
money because somebody was passionate about it, or they believed
in it, or knew that the perspective of the particular
show hadn't been seen before and was important. I mean,
one of the biggest examples, and I'm a huge fan
of the show obviously, is Seinfeld, which didn't do well
(43:42):
the first couple of seasons, but the executives were like, no,
this is a very funny show with a very unique perspective. Yes,
So I think it's bullshit to take that away. Also,
what I was really getting at too with how you
dealt with leadership is I only had one show that
I sold that was on the air. When my show
Sunny Side got came canceled by NBC, I think we
had like an hour and a half before they full
(44:06):
deadline one more time. But it was one of those
things where they literally in the morning were like everything
is so funny. We have your back. We have your back.
Don't worry. We have your back. Don't worry about last
night's ratings. You know, we're giving this ten weeks before
we before we have to make a decision. You guys
are so funny. Literally in the morning, okay, And then
(44:28):
three hours later there was a phone call that's like, hey,
you're getting canceled. Anyway, The point of all this is
that Joel Kim Booster, who is hilarious, who I love
very much, He's very funny, he was in our cast
and we happened to be canceled on Columbus Day, okay,
and oh god, and just for background, like so the
(44:48):
show Sunny Side was the most ethnically diverse show in
the history of network TV, which I was very proud of.
Our time slot was replaced by the new revamp of
Will and Grace, so Joel tweets. After it became a
news story, Joel was said something like NBC canceled the
most diverse show in the history of network TV on
(45:08):
Columbus Day and replaced it with an all white show.
You just can't make this up. And I immediately got
a call from NBC's PR department because I'm the co creator, right,
and I'm an excited producer. They're like, hey, you need
to talk to Joel Kim Booster about he has to
pull that tweet down. And I said, I'm happy to
talk to Joel Kim Booster, but can you please let
(45:29):
me know what it is about the tweet that's not
accurate so that I can let him know. They were like, well,
it's just the tweet is not it's not a good tweet.
Like no, no, no, totally I know. And in my
head too, you know, obviously is the like, fuck off,
you just cancel our show. I'm obviously not telling my
I'm not policing my actor because if I'll read it
(45:49):
back to you, everything he wrote is factual. You did
cancel the most diverse show on Columbus Day and replace
it with an all white show. And then I was
like yes, yeah. I was like, you can called Joel
if you want to, right, And everybody was scared of
Joel can Booster, so nobody else called and I just
I sort of laughed about it. So I also was
wondering if you had stories like that with some of
(46:10):
the more passionate members of your team.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah. I actually I love that story so much, and
I'll tell you why, because the exact same thing happened
to me, not with one of my employees, well actually
with one of my employees. But one story that comes
to mind is right before the twenty twenty four election,
I published an op ed from me written by me
about how catastrophic Biden and Harris had been for Gaza,
(46:35):
but arguing that Trump would be even worse, and putting
all the points of like what he has said about it,
what Jared Kushner has said about developing beachfront property in Gaza,
and all the things right to make the argument that, like,
it's really important even if you're mad at Biden and Harris,
understandably so to think about this when you're casting your vote.
(46:55):
Got a lot of backlash for that op ed, and
a lot of people, and I won't say like who
specifically internally or externally, but I'll say some very powerful
people had a conversation with me about it, and they're like,
so it's a bad that you wrote and posted about
on Instagram? Do you think that was the wisest idea?
(47:19):
And my response was, is there anything in there that's inaccurate?
And they couldn't say yes, Like I just kept asking.
They kept trying to dance around it, like basically like,
maybe you shouldn't have published this because of the reaction
that it caused. And my guiding principle is just like,
is there anything in there that is inaccurate? And there
would just be a pause and they'd be like, not
(47:40):
that I know of, and I'm like, thank yo, Then
what are we doing here? Like why are we talking?
But that happened to me and then absolutely one of
the challenges I'd say of managing teen Vogue is that
we do have such a wonderfully passionate, vocal, socially connected
staff who don't give a fuck about what they're posting.
(48:02):
And that definitely happened after But I guess I'll give
credit to Conde for this. Nobody called me about people's
posts after we got laid off, so I think they
understood that we could say, you know what we wanted
to say.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Oh good, that's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they understood. They
understood what the challenges were.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
One of the things that I loved about Teen Vogue
was that it was kind of the last one standing
of all the teen magazines that so many of us
grew up with, like they all went at a print
or offline, but teen Vogue stayed, and it stayed because
it was always true to its audience.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
When the Teen Vogue news broke, I got tons of
texts you are so well respected and well loved, and
I know we have a bunch of mutual friends. But
these texts were also from people who just knew that
you and I knew each other, saying, you know, how
can we support Varsha? This is super exciting for her
next steps. Like everything was always viewed positively, and I
(48:57):
obviously didn't want to like blow up your spot the
day of remember texting Casey your husband to be like, hey,
how can everybody support Versa? So now that it's been
a little time and you have a little perspective, what
are you most excited about for your next steps or
the future?
Speaker 2 (49:11):
That's so nice to hear, Thank you. I think I'm
excited to take on different projects. I absolutely want to
stay in the media journalism space and working with the
young audiences, but you know, I'm also excited about the
possibility of branching out to other areas as well. But yeah,
that's like I'm still very much in this liminal phase
(49:32):
where I'm figuring things out, But the exciting thing is
there is a lot of opportunity and I think, like,
that's my final optimistic take of this period of history
is like the conversations that I've had since getting laid
off show me that as dire as things are right now,
there are a lot of people who want to fund
and support real journalism and young people, and we just
(49:56):
got to take advantage of that. So that's my plan.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Thanks for doing this versa, of course, that was so fun.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Here we go again as a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Snaffoo Media in association with New Metric Media. Our
executive producers are me Calpen Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino,
Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan
tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our
producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory
(50:29):
Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt Gosson, Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline
Johnson and Meghan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Basner, Isaac Dunham,
Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart podcasts, but
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks for listening. Everybody,
(50:52):
tell your friends, write a review. All of this helps.
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Calpen
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