‘The Root’ Staffers Ordered To Write More Articles to ‘Offset the Tragic Loss’ of Colleague, Days After Her Death

Staffers at The Root were ordered to write more articles for the news outlet this week in an effort to help “offset the tragic loss” of their colleague Stephanie Holland, who passed away on New Year’s Eve.

Just days after Holland passed away at the age of 47, The Root deputy editor Dustin Seibert reportedly urged writers to ramp up their productivity to compensate.

“We need each of you to write four trending stories daily. This will bring us closer to standards expected of daily writers across the industry, as well as help us offset the tragic loss of Stephanie,” wrote Seibert in a memo. “If you are working on a slideshow, you are still only expected to provide two more trending stories that day.”

According to Semafor’s Max Tani, who broke the story, the memo “stunned” staff at the news outlet, who mocked the “fun times at G/O” – the parent company of The Root – they were experiencing.

In a statement to Semafor, a spokesperson for The

Root claimed the memo had been taken “out of context” and “included reasonable, industry standard goals that had been already communicated to the staff weeks ago.”

Following Gawker’s demise in 2016, the private equity-backed G/O Media purchased several Gawker properties, including Gizmodo, Kotaku, and The Root.

Since 2020, G/O Media has sold nine of its properties off individually, including Lifehacker, Jezebel, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, and Gizmodo.

G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller has repeatedly found himself under fire from staffers at the company’s various properties over wages, work conditions, mass layoffs, and the use of dodgy artificial intelligence to replace writers.