Disgruntled CBR Employee Hijacks Official Twitter Account, Publicly Accuses Outlet Of Becoming “An AI-Driven, Clickbait-Focused Content Mill”
In a move that speaks volumes to the present state of the entertainment media ecosystem, a disgruntled Comic Book Resources employee recently used their access to the outlet’s official Twitter account to deliver a scathing condemnation of its current leadership direction.
The chain of events that prompted the employee’s rebellion first began in May, when CBR’s parent company, Valnet Inc., laid off the outlet’s Senior Features Editor Christopher Baggett, Senior News Editor Stephen Gerding, and Editor-in-Chief Adam Swiderski.
“CBR will be undergoing major structural changes related to turning the corner on both culture and performance,” said Valnet Inc. content director George Edelman in announcing the trio’s forced exit. “As a result certain roles no longer exist, and we are focusing on individuals who can create a more positive culture going forward.”
However, despite Valnet’s claim that these staffing changes were made in service of sparking a new and more “positive” company culture within CBR, supposed insiders who allegedly spoke to The Beat informed the outlet “that those removed were actually standing up for writers, with Swiderski, Gerding and Baggett pushing back against more changes along the lines of what Puc reported.”
“Writers were being asked to do more work while shrinking the Pay Per View rates,” detailed The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald of her sources’ information. “The situation was described to me by one person as ‘working writers to the bone.”
“The situation is so dire that in addition to the three editors, I’m told two HR people were laid off, who also objected to the demands that management was making on writers, who, as a reminder, are contractors, not employees,” she added. “That HR people risked their jobs – and lost them – to stand up for the rights of contract workers is a situation I’ve not heard of before, and quite the indictment of Valnet’s working conditions.”
A month later, Valnet’s supposed ‘structural changes’ would claim the job of the site’s Comic Book News Editor Brandon Schreuer.
Tweeting about his release on June 26th, Schreuer would negatively note that he had “a MILLION stories that could be told about the past month and [Valnet],” though ultimately chose to keep them close to his chest.
Following a quiet July, Valnet would resume their staffing cuts on August 18th, at which time both Lead News Editor Emily Zogbie and Editor Math Erao – the site’s last two editors – announced that their positions had been eliminated.
“After three years, I have been let go from CBR,” Zogbie informed her followers. “I started as a weekend news editor and left as the Lead News Editor. I may have more to say later, I dunno. I obviously have a pre-written statement prepared for this exact scenario lol, but I don’t wanna deal with it rn.”
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“After 4 years editing and writing for CBR, my position & department were eliminated by parent company Valnet today in their pivot away from news and towards being a content mill,” said Erao in her own statement. “They’ve spent months firing people and restructuring, so it wasn’t a huge surprise, but still a blow”.
In light of both Valnet’s further reduction of its editorial team and Erao’s accusation, many readers began to speculate that CBR was pivoting away from actual news coverage in favor of gaming ad revenue by vomiting out AI-generated non-articles.
This speculation eventually grew so rampant that on August 20th, CBR managing editor Jon Arvedon took to his personal Twitter account to explicitly clarify, “No, CBR has not eliminated its news section.”
It would be two days later, ostensibly in response to Arvedon’s above statement, that one of the site’s disgruntled employees would make their frustrations publicly known.
Taking advantage of their access to the site’s official Twitter account, the unknown employee would tweet on August 22nd, “Despite rumors to the contrary, we have not eliminated our News section. We simply fired all the news editors who didn’t resign in protest and have been slowly gutting our other departments as Valnet continues CBR’s shift to an AI-driven, clickbait-focused content mill”.
Unsurprisingly, this tweet would be quickly deleted – so much so that it was unable to be properly archived – but not before it was screencapped and shared far and wide across social media.
Eventually responding to the PR nightmare, Arvedon asserted in a now-deleted Tweet, per a transcription provided by Bleeding Cool, “If I was a f–king clown who suddently found myself with a lot more free time on my hands, I’d probably do this too. Well played.”
Taking note of Arevedon’s response, Erao would subsequently confirm, “We all woke having been locked out of every account so looks like at least one person who’s still left is pissed”.
“Nice to know someone there cares about those of us who were fired,” she concluded.
As of writing, neither CBR nor Valnet Inc. have offered any official response to the accusations made in the rogue tweet. Further, as noted above, the identity of the rogue employee has yet to be confirmed.
Until then, keep following Bounding Into Comics for all your non-machine reporting needs!
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