COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 13/09/2018
Mathew Ingram
IT BEGAN, AS SO MANY SIMILAR STORIES DO, with a series of tweets. On September 4th, a writer at The Outline, a news startup founded in 2016 by Joshua Topolsky, posted thatshe and several of her colleagues had suddenly been laid off, leaving the site with no staff writers whatsoever. This was met by expressions of sympathy from others in the media, but also an element of disbelief. After all, hadn’t The Outline just announced a $5 million round of funding in May? Where had all the money gone? Some writers, angry at what appeared to be another VC-backed startup taking advantage of freelancers, published an open letter saying they planned to boycott the site.