CNET, PCMag, Mashable staffers issue vote of no confidence

Unionized journalists at Ziff Davis brands including PCMag, CNET, Mashable and more have overwhelmingly approved a vote of no confidence in company executive vice president and tech group general manager Kate Gutman.

The collective action from workers at the company comes in response to multiple rounds of layoffs during the last two years.

Leadership at Ziff Davis Creators Guild, a bargaining unit of The NewsGuild of New York, sent the vote of no confidence in a letter addressed to Gutman on Tuesday, Feb. 17. More than 80% of the union voted in favor and signed the letter.

“We, the undersigned members of the Ziff Davis Creators Guild, are deeply concerned by your lack of leadership and distorted priorities driving the direction of our company in lieu of any discernible plan toward success. This letter is a vote of no confidence, which we have collectively taken, to demonstrate that we have lost all faith in your abilities to manage the company,” the letter to Gutman states.

The tech publisher let go five additional workers in the most recent round of layoffs in January. The Guild-represented workers had been central to the critically successful presence of Ziff Davis at CES, a major consumer electronics show in Las Vegas.

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.