And now, the main event…

On Wednesday afternoon, about a dozen, mostly Gen-Zillenial Condé Nast employees gathered on the 34th floor of One World Trade outside the office of Stan Duncan, the company’s human resources director. The day before, Condé had announced that it would be shuttering Teen Vogue and folding it into Vogue.com—a seemingly overdue decision that nevertheless is not without some heartbreak. Six employees, including top editor Versha Sharma, lost their jobs amid the restructuring.

The 34th floor congregants, who hailed from across the portfolio—The New Yorker, Wired, Bon Appétit, etcetera—either wanted to press Duncan on the rationale for that decision or execute some kind of performative rain dance that might somehow reverse his decision. Duncan, a Condé veteran once lauded by Human Resources Director magazine as “something of an HR icon himself,” understandably wanted no part of the ambush. In a video of the confrontation obtained by The Wrap, Duncan repeatedly asked the group to return to their desks, noting that he didn’t have time to take their questions. He then walked down the hallway in the hopes of “returning you back to your place of work.”

Alas, this suggestion went unheeded. Alma Avalle, a writer and producer for Bon Appétit and the group’s most vocal representative, suggested that Duncan might not think his employees’ feelings were worth his time. Avalle subsequently followed Duncan down the hall and asked if he was “running away.” In the final moments of the video, Avalle can be heard yelling after him: “Did you let go of Teen Vogue for political reasons?! What are you going to do to stand up to the Trump administration?!”

Later that day, Condé Nast fired Avalle and three other employees who confronted Duncan for “gross misconduct and policy violations.” The company also filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the NewsGuild of New York, which is affiliated with the Condé United union, over its “repeated and egregious disregard” of their collective bargaining agreement. The union responded with a statement calling the terminations “illegal” and demanding more answers about the layoffs. And thus concluded the latest micro-drama in a cascading series of them—the result of both the company’s character and the times in which it operates.

As you’ve probably surmised by now, there are no heroes in this story. Most Condé sources viewed the union’s confrontation as a sophomoric ambush by actors ignorant of both pre-pandemic workplace decorum and the obvious economic rationale for Teen Vogue’s closure, which the company first considered as far back as a decade ago. These people confessed privately that the union has become excessively disruptive, disorganized, and ineffective—and now it’s embarrassing the company, too. “What did they think they were going to achieve with such a stupid stunt?” asked one higher-up.

At the same time, some feel that Condé moved too quickly to retaliate and might have benefitted from taking more time to review the matter—or at least ostensibly review the matter. There also may have also been some unintended casualties. Jake Lahut, a Wired political reporter and frequent MSNBC guest, was among the Condé Four. Based on the evidence provided in the video, he appeared to do nothing more than ask Duncan to clarify his definition of “congregating.” Obnoxious, perhaps. But fireable?

Condé representatives have suggested that there’s additional footage of the confrontation, and sources have told me that some employees entered Duncan’s office without his permission. Condé has not provided that footage, and both C.E.O. Roger Lynch and his chief spokesperson, Danielle Carrig, did not respond to requests for comment.

Yes, this whole affair is secondhand mortifying, and a byproduct of Condé Nast’s decline. It was not so long ago that this storied house of Anna and Graydon and Tina was known for its chauffeured Town Cars and low-six-figure annual clothing allowances and plane privileges. (If you’re unfamiliar with that history, The New York Times’s Michael Grynbaum wrote a book about it.)

That Condé is long gone, and the people who operate the company want it that way. But as the budgets got squeezed and Covid- and #MeToo-era politics took hold, some employees adopted a posture of defensive entitlement. As I’ve noted in recent years, disgruntled Condé staff have marched up to Lynch’s (often empty) office, staged Oscars-themed walkouts, and, in a pitch-perfect expression of the W.F.H. era, bombarded Lynch and Wintour’s inboxes with sassy reply-alls.

It’s not just Condé, of course. The Times, the Post… pretty much every major outlet of note has endured some version of these tantrums. Last summer, miffed Wall Street Journal employees stuck Post-it notes on the glass wall of Emma Tucker’s office in protest of a restructuring that affected a small number of employees. (An aside: Do these Journal staffers realize how good they’ve got it under Tucker, who has turned out to be one of the more quick-witted editors of her generation? They could be languishing in the Will Lewis telenovela instead.) Emma wasn’t in her office—arguably the savviest way to handle these things—but her formidable and aptly named assistant, Jo Bull, was there to head off the charge. “Do you think this is very helpful?” she asked. “Do you want to stick them on me?”

Anyway, what makes the most recent Condé micro-drama so notable is the swiftness with which the company moved to quash it. In previous years, the sensitivities of the era forced employers to accommodate these outbursts—make concessions, create new policies, coordinate working groups, accept protests as a form of feedback. No longer. Lynch, who has led the company through its later-stage emotional gyrations, appears to have had enough of the circus. “You get paid to be here, this is a for-profit business, and the media industry is collapsing,” one high-level Condé source told me. “Have some awareness.”

From the union perspective, these broader societal changes may feel like further validation of Condé’s decision to shutter Teen Vogue. In the Elaine Welteroth and Phillip Picardi era, the celebrity-crush and prom-tips platform transformed into a political, ideological, and otherwise woke forum for Millennials—chasing the traffic highs of “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America.” Hence the vague, pervading notion that Teen Vogue could have been shuttered for “political reasons.”

But there’s a simpler explanation: Amid the prolonged contraction of the magazine industry, the spinoff titles will necessarily be subsumed into the masterbrands. (As my partner Lauren Sherman has noted, “If Vogue Business is moving under the Vogue URL, then Teen Vogue should, too.”) This was a sober (and way-too-late) business decision that came amid a broader round of layoffs across the company—the umpteenth in recent history as Lynch & Co. continue to struggle toward profitability.

The great irony is that the #Resistance era actually kept Teen Vogue alive for longer than the economics warranted.

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