http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/magazine/arianna-huffingtons-improbable-insatiable-content-machine.html
The Huffington Post remain at their desks during lunch and keep an eye on the web at all times. If, while you’re offline, three new Instagram filters are announced and you’re late to post the news, that’s a problem. ‘‘Just about everyone works continuously, whether you’re at the office or not,’’ one former employee said. ‘‘That little green light that says you’re available on Gchat is what matters.’’ Low pay worsens the strain. One former employee said that some staff members take second jobs to cover their expenses. Some tutor; others wait on tables; others babysit. (A representative for The Huffington Post said the company was unaware of any moonlighting.) Many staff members rely on what has been called ‘‘HuffPost lunch’’ — Luna Bars, carrots, hummus, apples, bananas and sometimes string cheese, all served gratis in a kitchen area of the office. Inevitably, there is burnout. At the New York office, nearly two dozen employees have left since the start of this year, either because they were laid off or found more enticing and less hectic jobs. A Gawker post in early June, written by an anonymous former staff member, said the recent departures were hardly a surprise because the place has long been ‘‘so brutal and toxic it would meet with approval from committed sociopaths.’’ A former editor told me about a period in 2013 when a series of departures left a cluster of empty desks along a wall that Huffington walks past on the way to her office. ‘‘Someone told my manager, ‘Arianna is really stressed out about the number of people leaving, so we need a bunch of people to sit at those desks in the path from the elevator to her office, to make her feel better,’ ’’ the former editor said. ‘‘So we sat there, waiting to say: ‘Hello! Greetings!’ as she walked by. It was supposed to be for two hours, but she got there at about 3 in the afternoon instead of 11 in the morning. It was absurd. I had to interrupt my workday because this woman was stressed out, because so many people had left, because they were stressed out.’’ (A Huffington Post representative denied this story, saying it was ‘‘clearly made up by someone with an ax to grind.’’) Staff members in Huffington’s inner circle must also contend with her superhuman endurance. Her oft-repeated claim to sleep eight hours a night notwithstanding, she rarely seems to be idle. Emails from her cease, several ex-employees told me, only between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. There are staff members who have stuck it out for years and speak highly of the site as a place to work. They say they form lasting bonds with co-workers and relish the sense that they are writing for millions of readers. Some, like Daniel Koh, a former A-Teamer, speak with a reverence and fondness for Huffington herself. Koh described her as a perfectionist of exceptional intellectual wattage, a leader who never raises her voice and never holds a grudge. ‘‘Was it intense, and long hours, and did she teach me to maximize my workday?’’ he said. ‘‘Absolutely.’’ But others who have worked closely with Huffington have found it a bruising experience, saying that she is perpetually on the lookout for signs of disloyalty, to a degree that bespeaks paranoia or, at the very least, pettiness. Employees cycle in and out of her favor, hailed as the site’s savior one moment, ignored the next. (The Gawker post called the office ‘‘essentially Soviet in its functioning.’’) ‘‘Everyone’s stock is shooting up or falling at any given moment, so everyone is rattled with uncertainty and insecurity,’’ one former employee said. ‘‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’’ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
