This is an excellent thread and 100% true. All media companies should be judged on their attrition, because very often people come up against these biased structures and decide to leave rather than continue the exhaustion of confronting them. https://twitter.com/ivieani/status/1275206176687390722

There is such a toxic narrative that media bosses put forward that people leave because they must be flawed somehow and it is incredible to see how many media workers are gullible enough to believe this. It's a narrative designed to protect the institution from accountability.

If nothing else, Ivie's story should remind media folks to question the prevailing narratives about why obviously talented people, especially Black women and WOC, tend to leave large media organizations. It is often about space not being made for them to exist and thrive.

The bit about her boss criticizing her for "wanting to be famous" and then saying he himself wanted to be famous especially gets at a reflexive impulse of media leaders to limit the exposure of women and keep them in "workhorse" roles. It's so common. Structural bias.

It's just vastly necessary for media people to stop identifying with their institutions because those institutions were not only *built* on structural bias, they persist in them. The idea that talented people "just leave" is such transparent BS + it's one media bosses perpetuate.

I have also seen media bosses straight-up lie about why top employees left, to protect their own managerial malpractice and their institution. But the media gossip mills eat it up with absolutely no skepticism. NDAs that muzzle exiting employees entrench the problem.

In the end, a lot of talented women decide to leave these toxic institutions rather than persisting in the personal exhaustion of trying to "fix" them. Which denudes the industry of essential experience and leaves younger ppl without role models/mentors. It exhausts anew.

It's genuinely shocking how journalists who prize themselves on skepticism so rarely apply the basics of that outlook to our own industry. All these talented women leaving! Wild coincidence! Maybe it's worth seeing patterns of how they raised problems +were ignored and put down.

That's your Media Meditation for today: Stop believing your bosses. You would not believe the nonsense that happens in media executive suites and management rooms. It is mind-bogglingly irrational and self-aggrandizing at the expense of good - and great! - workers.

*pride themselves! Grammar autocorrect is out here trying to kill my thoughts smh

If you really want to know whether a media company would be a good fit for you, ask someone there about the reasons for their most important and recent employee departures.