The union that represents journalists at Politico and E&E News sent out the following:
On January 29, as we were discussing buyouts for the energy and environment teams, Joe Schatz told PEN Guild union leaders, “The brands and the publications are not going away. We are looking to sharpen their missions.”
Today, he told us that E&E News as we know it is gone. Energywire, Climatewire, Greenwire, E&E News PM, E&E News Daily, PowerSwitch — six publications are being killed this summer.
This is information that management should have had, and should have told us, while our colleagues were making the decision about taking a buyout earlier this year. PEN Guild’s Labor Management Committee has questioned POLITICO monthly since January — including Jonathan Greenberg himself — about the vision for the newly combined energy and environment teams. At no point was sunsetting the E&E News publications every mentioned — not even at our most recent meeting on Thursday, June 4. And yet somehow Semafor had the exclusive at 9:17 a.m. today.
This is the second time management has lied to employees in six months — the first being when John Harris said in December there would be no layoffs at the company, only to lay off some managers a month later.
Management says that none of us should be shocked, that change is part of the news business, that they did not lie and that they only finalized this new plan last week. And yet the question remains why such ground-shattering, publication-killing plans were not part of the “new vision” management announce in January. Why were our subscribers only surveyed in May?
This is not leadership. This is unacceptable.
