The Tragic Loss of Teen Vogue

Condé Nast folded a beloved magazine that treated youth and feminism as political topics, not trends.

Last week, Condé Nast announced during a perfunctory conversation with staffers that they were folding Teen Vogue into Vogue proper and laying off 70 percent of the staff. Teen Vogue was a beloved magazine that for ten years had unflinchingly taken on coverage of issues at the hot center of American political controversy, among them trans healthcare, abortion bans, and student protests in support of Gaza. Meanwhile, Vogue busied itself with shoots of Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid. As a spin-off, Teen Vogue was as unlike its parent as Vivian Wilson is to Elon Musk.

To staffers, it was clear that the politically progressive editorial stance that Teen Vogue had represented was now finished, and that the people hired to lead that coverage were no longer wanted at the company. Allegra Kirkland, the magazine’s politics director from 2019 until earlier this year, wrote in Talking Points Memo that “nearly all of my former colleagues—including all but one woman of color and the only trans staffer—were let go. The identity and politics sections, which covered reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, campus organizing, state and national politics, the labor movement, education, and more, were folded.” Vogue announced it would continue to publish content under the Teen Vogue brand about “career development” and “cultural leadership.”

A spokesperson from Condé Nast wrote in a statement to CJR: “Teen Vogue has faced ongoing challenges around scale and audience reach for some time. Rather than continuing to operate independently with limited reach, bringing Teen Vogue under the Vogue umbrella allows it to tap into a larger audience, stronger distribution, and more resources.” Those who worked there have greeted this reasoning with skepticism. The publication’s March interview with Wilson, Musk’s estranged daughter, was one of Condé Nast’s top-performing stories of the year, according to Kirkland. She confirmed to me that the story garnered nearly six hundred thousand views, over two million minutes spent, and coverage in outlets including the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and New York magazine. It was the best-performing cover in Teen Vogue history, prompting Si Newhouse to congratulate Anna Wintour on the story. Far more than a typical celebrity interview, the piece situated the conversation within the context of Musk’s firings of federal employees and wove in reporting about legislative attacks on trans teenagers.