The Root and the case for culturally competent Black media

Sometimes Things Just End

The Root — a digital website that boasts that it provides news with a Black perspective for Black people —  has lost more than two-thirds of its writers, journalists, popular and noted columnists, and content producers, an analysis of the masthead shows. 

In April, the site’s former celebrated editor-in-chief, Danielle Belton, left to take a position at The Huffington Post. Last month, the site’s prolific heavy-hitters Michael Harriot and Stephen Crockett said their goodbyes after tenures of five and more than 10 years respectively. And now sources say the Very Smart Brothas column, co-founded by Damon Young and Panama Jackson, will disappear from The Root. 

The staff shake-up comes just seven months after Vanessa K. De Luca was appointed to the top position and the site shifted away from political news and cultural criticism to focus more on celebrity news and entertainment. The staff moves and changes in editorial direction raise questions about the site’s future, its longevity, and whether it can maintain the loyalty of its hard-won audience.

In many ways, The Root is experiencing the same market pressures and staff instability that all media outlets are experiencing, said Charles Whitaker, the Dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, who closely follows Black media and trends in the ethnic press. 

“They are attempting to find new business models,” Whitaker said. “You’ve got to do something different and outstanding to make yourself a destination and it’s hard for Black Media to make themselves a destination for a large number of readers.” 

For a time, The Root had been a destination site. 

De Luca declined to be interviewed for this story and released a written statement instead. Jim Spanfeller, the CEO of G/O Media, which now owns The Root, did not respond to emails or phone calls for this story. 

In interviews, former and current staff blamed changes in ownership not only for the exodus of high-profile personnel but for the publication’s shift in focus on entertainment at the expense of culturally competent public service journalism and insightful commentary that helped popularize the site. 

Crockett, who had been at The Root since it started in 2008, wrote a goodbye letter, but never actually addressed why he decided to resign. He did, however, offer a hint in a November 23 tweet: “I will be leading a Twitter thread entitled: ‘How to murder a Black website.’ This is a working title. The first one was called: ‘it be your own people.’ ”

How it started

Initially launched as a vertical by The Washington Post in 2008, its white owners at the Post gave The Root plenty of autonomy and trusted its stewardship to revered professor and historian, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and top-notch editor Lynette Clemetson, who came to The Root as its founding managing editor from The New York Times. 

The Root flourished at the Post under this leadership and became a go-to site for Black thought leadership on critical topics of the day such as the housing crisis to policing in America and more. When Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper from the Graham Family, corporate interest turned to position the Post into a national political and government accountability site, and the Root was sold off in 2015 to the Spanish language media company, Univision. 

At Univision, The Root continued to gain traction, expanding in audience size and attracting major advertising dollars as its new owners packaged the site with others such as Jezebel, Fusion, and Deadspin, reaching highly coveted younger audiences. 

“The Root has had many iterations since it was started in 2008 for the Obama era and, for a long time, remained true to its original ambition to be a highbrow political alternative to then mainstream Black magazines, with then-editor Donna Byrd successfully realizing Henry Louis Gates Jr’s starting vision. Over time, however, a lack of attention and investment meant it faced a declining and aging audience, one that was primarily concentrated on the East Coast,” said Raju Narisetti, who acquired The Root as then CEO of Gizmodo Media Group, which was a part of Univision at the time. “What changed in the relatively short time it was part of the Gizmodo Media Group was a very successful transition, under Danielle Belton’s stewardship and with Univision resources, to becoming the digital home for a more politically, socially and culturally demanding Black audience that fell in love with The Root’s ‘calling it as its writers see it’ opinions, and its fully Black prism, to what America was going through, as it moved toward the Trump era.”

How it’s going

In 2019, G/O Media purchased The Root and 12 other websites from Univision for $20.6 million. Michael Harriot, who penned some of The Root’s most incisive and popular columns, said the company’s new owners wanted to streamline the site, replacing edgy commentary on race and culture with lighter, more trendy content. Belton, he said, fought many of these changes. 

“Danielle Belton shielded us from the nonsense,” said Harriot, who now writes columns for The Guardian U.S. “We just had to write what we wanted to write and what we thought mattered. She served as a wall against the higher-ups. We were only concerned about completing our mission.”

Harriot, like several other staffers, described The Root in the past tense, calling it a “place where Black people could go to talk to each other in the language that we use, to say the things that we can’t say in a lot of mainstream publications.”

The Root is not the first of G/O Media’s publications to revolt and capsize due to clashes with corporate. In 2019, Deadspin became embroiled in a battle with G/O management CEO Jim Spanfeller, a media executive who ran Forbes from 2001 to 2008. The staff at Deadspin were told in a memo to “stick to sports” in its reporting. The staff bucked at this edict from the new owners. According to the New York Times, the site’s then editor-in-chief Barry Petchesky refused to follow the memo and was fired. The rest of the Deadspin staff then resigned in protest. Then G/O Media’s editorial director Paul Maidment resigned as well. That same year, two former executives filed discrimination and negligence lawsuits against G/O Media and Spanfeller. This year has not been much better. Jezebel, the feminist blog formerly owned by Gawker, also saw about  75 percent of its staff leave this year. G/O Media’s new editorial director Jim Rich also resigned due to “internal clashes with other higher-ups.” Rich was in hot water the week before his resignation for an article he co-wrote on Deadspin, which buried racist comments made by ESPN host Rachel Nichols. Rich denied that his resignation has anything to do with the article. 

‘Tyranny of the click’

Narisetti, the former CEO who now heads up Global Publishing at McKinsey and Company, said that significant investments were made to bring powerful voices to The Root. “What many people also forget when talking about The Root now is that, during this period (2017-18), not only did it see all-time-record audiences, but more than half its readers were White and Hispanic, making it (a)the real voice of Black journalism that actually reached diverse American audiences, thanks in part to being within a network of sites, such as Jezebel, Gizmodo, and Jalopnik. It also became the home for powerful writers who lived across America, from Mississippi and Texas, to Chicago and Los Angeles” he said. 

Whitaker, who once worked at Ebony as a senior editor, reminisced on The Root’s vision. “It was supposed to be more holistic and to provide a more penetrating look at African American culture, art, and news. But it, too, has become subject to the tyranny of the click. You don’t necessarily get eyeballs with traditional news stories. You get it through celebrity, gossip, and conflict. That winds up driving editorial decisions.”

The need for culturally competent media

On its homepage, it can be seen that the content of The Root has strayed from news and Black opinion to entertainment. Before April 2021, the featured stories were news, opinion, and race matters. Today, much of the headline content is fashion, music, entertainment, and television. Utilizing the Wayback Machine, it can be seen that the navigation bar changed to include Culture and Entertainment on May 28, 2021. Very Smart Brothas was pushed to the end of the bar. At a later date, the Beauty/Style tab was also added.

Days after Belton’s departure, Damon Young published a piece titled “I’ll be around” which was published by The Root on April 30. Yet, within seven months, most of the staff would leave. First to step away were staff writer Joe Jurado and dedicated freelancer Zack Linly. Then Senior Reporter Terrell J. Starr, known for covering U.S.-Russian foreign policy and the 2020 elections, and three video producers exited The Root. Finally, Managing Editor Genetta Adams and News Editor Monique Judge were forced out in early November followed by Harriot’s and Crockett’s exits two weeks later. 

Belton was replaced by De Luca, an outsider, instead of Adams, a long-time staffer who had applied for The Root’s top job. Second-in-command and day-to-day manager of operations, Adams had been at The Root since its inception. She is now working as opinions editor at another Black national website heavy on commentary and entertainment, TheGrio.com. The Grio is owned by Byron Allen, one of the wealthiest Black men in America. 

The Root’s staff members were surprised when De Luca arrived as the new editor-in-chief. De Luca is the former editor-in-chief of the once venerable Essence Magazine, a pioneer publication targeting Black women that has also experienced significant turnover and ownership changes in recent years. Before joining The Root, De Luca had most recently occupied the top of the masthead at Zora, a site for women of color launched on publishing platform Medium. She took a buyout earlier this year after Medium decided to scale back on its journalism. 

“Whenever there is a change of editorial leadership, there is always a transition period,” De Luca wrote in an email to The Pivot Fund. “I enjoy full editorial independence and am firmly committed to continuing The Root’s mission of providing unflinching news commentary and analysis with our own unique point of view. I have had no pressure whatsoever from management to change this mission or the voice of The Root, and if there was such pressure, I wouldn’t stand for it.” 

Head of Corporate Communications at G/O Media, Mark Neschis, referred to De Luca’s statement when The Pivot requested an interview with the company’s CEO. 

Though several former and current staffers were reluctant to speak on the record, they privately accused De Luca of being little more than a mouthpiece for G/O Media and its white CEO. One of the primary complaints staffers have is that despite being the highest-grossing website in the G/O Media portfolio, personnel did not receive bonuses or raises. They also claim that there is no upward mobility at the company. These issues, they said, were brought to De Luca’s attention but nothing has changed.  “Staff fought back when she wouldn’t,” one former staff member said. 

While De Luca did not consent to an interview for this story, in October matters came to a head when she wanted to profile a controversial Black content creator, staff pushed back, and refused. Shortly after, De Luca took to Twitter: “If y’all only knew how many people i (sic) have outlasted, you wouldn’t try me. #resilienceisaverb,” she tweeted. Some of the staff took offense and saw this as a microaggression. 

A note: The difficulty in nailing down one single cause of the exodus comes from the reluctance of Black staffers to publicly criticize the publication. Whitaker compared Black Media to a small family. “No one wants to air the family’s dirty laundry. There are enough other people out there who are willing to criticize and dismiss Black institutions. When you’ve been a part of a venerable Black institution, the last thing you want to do going out the door is to tear that down. That’s just a sense of solidarity,” he said. 

In any case, now the consensus is that The Root is dead or — at least — dying. 

Harriot’s last words in his farewell letter “Deuces” ring true with an ominous light. “See? Sometimes, things just end. Like this.”

Aja Hannah is a writer who believes in the Oxford comma, cheap flights, and a daily dose of chocolate. She has written for The Independent, The Progressive, and The Land. She currently resides in Cleveland with her two toddlers. 

One more note: Tracie Powell, the founder of The Pivot Fund and The Pivot Newsletter, was one of the first writers for The Root.com when it was based at The Washington Post. 

*Correction and clarification: The article initially said The Root had lost a third of its staff. We’ve updated to clarify that the publication has lost more than two-thirds of its staff. This article has also been amended to correct Raju Narisetti’s title. His current title is head of Global Publishing at McKinsey and Company.