If there was ever someone to model a soap opera villainess after, it would be girl boss dressed in Ann Taylor Loft CEO Tara McGowan.
She’s making progressive politics lame again. She’s basically Anna Delvey. Everyone else is paying for it while she grifts.
She’s laid off folks every couple of quarters since Q1 2021, including a mass layoff of 13 toward the end of January 2022, including many who were sought out leaders and folks the teams needed.
Each newsroom is staffed with really brilliant newspaper folks. They aren’t allowed to be coached up in digital and social platform spaces because the political operatives at the top of their “executive leadership team” have no news background. The CEO’s “time” at “60 minutes” don’t count.
They set lofty goals and pressed upon the staff’s necks the promise of “equitable bonuses,” cut the salaries of some, and consolidated teams, and still couldn’t get the revenue? While the ones who met their goals got $1,000 bonuses they scraped together, members of the C-suite got bonuses in excess of $7k. If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense. She promised an incentivized bonus structure last summer based on outrageous goals in four categories. She was only responsible for one of the goals — revenue. The staffs met their goal. Guess who didn’t meet hers re: revenue? She was too busy launching a really poorly named venture called “good information,” all but begging Axios and others to run the launch, like it matters.
The CEO wants cronies (like her COO, who is also not a journalist) to do her dirty work while she posts empty rhetoric on Twitter defending democracy and civics. She isn’t saving democracy through journalism. She’s disguising both her own and those of her benefactors’ political endeavors and desires with propaganda under the guise of local news journalism — the one medium most folks still believe in in these communities she swears she’s serving. She calls these would be readers “low-information voters” and is only concerned with the agenda of the progressive left. It’s the same propaganda the right is doing infinitely better than Tara ever could.
Additionally, she’s had 2 VPs of Content (C-suite) from May 2021 (beginning of the last transition) to September 2021, the COO was an atrocious fill-in until they promoted from within. She is someone who has essentially taken a Queen Mary I of England approach of ruling and burned all the Protestants.
There is no hope in a startup that changes the content pillars, mission, strategy, etc. every quarter. Tara is someone leading a group of talented folks one minute and hating “the media” on her verified Twitter the next. Pick a lane — no one who is so against mainstream media need not set their dreams on reinventing it.
To Tara — You’ll never be the loudest voice in the room. Have several seats.
