Condé Nast, the owners of Pitchfork, have announced plans to fold the music publication into mens fashion magazine GQ as part of a “restructuring”. According to an email sent by Condé Nast’s chief content officer Anna Wintour, “some of our Pitchfork colleagues will be leaving the company today”. However, it is currently unclear how many members of staff have been made redundant.
Pitchfork, which has been running since 1996, will be merged with GQ, and staff will now face mass layoffs. Senior staff members, including Pitchfork’s editor-in-chief, Puja Patel, have been made redundant. The moves comes after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance by the owners.
After the news was made public, many staff members and musicians took to Twitter to express their sadness and anger. Jillian Mapes, Pitchfork’s features editor, said that her job was “like being on a ferris wheel at closing time”. Meanwhile, Pitchfork’s founder and former editor-in-chief also expressed his sadness at the news on Twitter.
The merger will provide new possibilities for Pitchfork and GQ to approach music journalism in unique and valuable ways. However, the news of the mass layoffs has caused concern among the music community, with some musicians describing the move as a “net negative for musicians everywhere”
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