Things getting weird at Bon Appetit

[PCLoadLetter]

Editor Adam Rapoport resigns after photos of him dressed as a Puerto Rican cartoon surface... and then the BA Test Kitchen crew finds out through a colleague that only white editors are paid for their video appearances.

(If you are unaware... the BA Test Kitchen videos are great and have a huge online following. Seriously, they are the most important part of Bon Appetit now and it's not close. The top people are now refusing to do videos until this is resolved. If I'm the interim editor this gets solved by lunchtime tomorrow with some big-ass checks going to the aggrieved staff.)

Bon Appétit Editor Adam Rapoport Resigns

 

[Azrael]

Editor Adam Rapoport resigns after photos of him dressed as a Puerto Rican cartoon surface...

I'm always flabbergasted by the stupidity, insensitivity and cluelessness of things like this.

and then the BA Test Kitchen crew finds out through a colleague that only white editors are paid for their video appearances.

If I'm the interim editor this gets solved by lunchtime tomorrow with some big-ass checks going to the aggrieved staff.)

Bon Appétit Editor Adam Rapoport Resigns

agreed

 

[The Big Ragu]

My guess, and this is just a guess, but I think it is an educated guess, is that there wasn't a policy of paying white editors for videos, but not paying black editors. That seems so suspect on the face of it.

I'd guess that it was more that an assistant editor didn't get paid extra, but the person high on the masthead, who was considered way more integral to the videos and the development of the content, or who may have been working on a contract (that didn't include the videos) and not on salary, got paid something.

At a place like Bon Appetit, it's easy for that to then turn into a claim of paying whites and not blacks, because virtually the whole top of that masthead is white and there may be some token non-whites in editorial assistant and assistant editor positions. That Times piece said, "As a publisher, Condé Nast hires mostly white editors and writers, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds and have graduated from elite colleges. Writers of color and of less-connected backgrounds have often found it difficult to get jobs or get freelance articles accepted."

The reality may be that Bon Appetit doesn't have a very diverse editorial staff, which may be worth a discussion for them to have. And on top of that, the age old reality is that magazines have always been places where editorial assistants and assistant editors are expected to do a lot of grunt work for very little pay. They don't have trouble filling those positions, because the 20-somethings who take them see it as dues paying to try to work their way up the masthead.

 

[JayFarrar]

I'm a regular watcher of the BA test kitchen videos and among the featured players, there's not a single black person.
There's four people of color -- Sohla El-Waylly, Priya Krishna, Rick Martinez and Gaby Melian -- and are Indian-Americans and Hispanic/Latino out of a dozen or so who pop up the most frequently. The rest are white.
My guess is, similar to Ragu's, is that people like Claire and Brad get paid extra because they're the two who are most featured. Claire is the one who does the Gourmet Bakes where she reverse engineers junk food and then Leone does a series Its Alive and travels around doing various food adventures and making fermented shirt.
Both are regulars on Jimmy Fallon as well and they just have to drive a butt load of traffic.
Now they're all doing everything from home, so they're all getting much more exposure.
I will also probably be making Sohla's grilled cheese at some point this week because holy heck that shirt looked delicious.

 

[SixToe]

According to the Twittersphere posts-allegations-firestorm yesterday, Sohla's videos garner as many or more views and are far better than Claire's or others. Many suggest that Claire is somewhat lost on camera, and anytime Rappoport was on it was like "Ohhh, the GUY is here" with a much different vibe.

Look at some of their promo photos and there's something like a dozen white people and one POC. Sohla posted on Twitter she was hired as an assistant at $50K annually in NYC and was/is helping white assistants with less experience but who make more money. Lot of other charges about pay differences, promotion differences, ignoring multiple suggestions to do what some would (badly) call "ethnic" recipes and profiles.

A former photographer lays out some issues he experienced:

Another wowsers:




Anyone who knows anything about Conde Nast's heirarchy shouldn't be too surprised.

I'm normally pretty straightforward on the heirarchy system of a staff not demanding or forcing management to do something. In this case, good for the BA staff. Sounds like a toxic environment that needed some changes.

 

[The Big Ragu]

It looks like Sohla El-Waylly started this with an instagram story. She wrote: "I am angry and disgusted by the photo of @rapoport in brown face. I have asked for his resignation. This is just a symptom of the systematic racism that runs rampant within the CondeNast as a whole. I've been at Bon Appetit for 10 months. I am 35 years old and have over 15 years of professional experience. I was hired as an assistant editor at $50k to assist mostly white editors with significantly less experience than me. I've been pushed in front of video as a display of diversity. In reality, currently only white editors are paid for their video appearances. None of the people of color have been compensated. I demand not only the resignation of @rapoport but also to see BIPOC given fair titles, fair salaries and compensation for video appearances."

Conde Nast has denied her allegation that white editor are paid for the videos while people of color are not.

 

[SixToe]

The "brownface" photo was the first thing dug up from his past and posted on IG. When he called a staff video meeting to apologize, Sohla got pissed and on the call said he should resign. Then she went public with her IG post(s), which led to others.

From what I read today, the staffers had separate agreements for the videos and payment with Conde Nast Entertainment. CNE also would-could pick the staffers they liked, greenlight videos or shows-series, and all or almost all of those were with white staffers getting paid. Non-white staffers were asked to appear and work on videos but were not paid because they didn't have agreements with CNE.

Quite the drama.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

According to the Twittersphere posts-allegations-firestorm yesterday, Sohla's videos garner as many or more views and are far better than Claire's or others. Many suggest that Claire is somewhat lost on camera, and anytime Rappoport was on it was like "Ohhh, the GUY is here" with a much different vibe.

Look at some of their promo photos and there's something like a dozen white people and one POC. Sohla posted on Twitter she was hired as an assistant at $50K annually in NYC and was/is helping white assistants with less experience but who make more money. Lot of other charges about pay differences, promotion differences, ignoring multiple suggestions to do what some would (badly) call "ethnic" recipes and profiles.

A former photographer lays out some issues he experienced:

Another wowsers:




Anyone who knows anything about Conde Nast's heirarchy shouldn't be too surprised.

I'm normally pretty straightforward on the heirarchy system of a staff not demanding or forcing management to do something. In this case, good for the BA staff. Sounds like a toxic environment that needed some changes.

Twittersphere's wildly full of shirt on that account. Claire is by far the breakout "star" of the whole thing, and she's great on camera.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

I'm a regular watcher of the BA test kitchen videos and among the featured players, there's not a single black person.
There's four people of color -- Sohla El-Waylly, Priya Krishna, Rick Martinez and Gaby Melian -- and are Indian-Americans and Hispanic/Latino out of a dozen or so who pop up the most frequently. The rest are white.
My guess is, similar to Ragu's, is that people like Claire and Brad get paid extra because they're the two who are most featured. Claire is the one who does the Gourmet Bakes where she reverse engineers junk food and then Leone does a series Its Alive and travels around doing various food adventures and making fermented shirt.
Both are regulars on Jimmy Fallon as well and they just have to drive a butt load of traffic.
Now they're all doing everything from home, so they're all getting much more exposure.
I will also probably be making Sohla's grilled cheese at some point this week because holy heck that shirt looked delicious.

I'd be curious who exactly is paid and who isn't. I'd be very surprised if Rick Martinez isn't. I assume Priya and Gaby are not, but should be.

 

[JayFarrar]

I'd be curious who exactly is paid and who isn't. I'd be very surprised if Rick Martinez isn't. I assume Priya and Gaby are not, but should be.

I figure it will all come out.

Drew Magary took a swing at BA here

Drew Magary: Adam Rapoport's 'Bon Appetit' was a terrible magazine

And I have to agree. I'm not a normal BA reader and haven't looked at it in years. But after Martinez did a thing on tacos a few months back, then I was at Barnes & Noble and saw the taco issue. So I gave it a look and was shocked how terrible it was. I was a Lucky Peach (Rest in Perfection) subscriber and pretty avid consumer of various food media but, man, BA was so bad.

This also made me think that POC are generally under represented in food media. Carla Hall went on on Top Chef and broke through and Marcus Samuelson, Roy Choi and Dave Chang. But who is the biggest name American-born black chef in America?

I have no idea.

 

[Azrael]

let the dead language of corporate rebranding be your apology

A Long-Overdue Apology, and Where We Go From Here

 

[The Big Ragu]

If you look at their media kit, they are selling an average reader who is female, presumably white, 50, and earns almost $120K a year to advertisers. Supposedly they have 1.5 million worth of that average reader.

Their editorial is going to reflect that demographic and the niche that the magazine fills for them. I have no idea if Bon Appetit does well financially, but if it does, what they were doing worked for them. So the only reason to do that lame apology and promise to not be racist is the bad PR and their fear that "racist magazine" sticks to them and causes damage. At the end of the day, though, they can certainly sprinkle more brown and black faces in, but they are going to be afraid to make major changes to the editorial, because they can't risk alienating the demographic that makes them their ad revenue.