Behind the Blog: The Economy, Robot Umpires, and Monsters

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss the economy and the state of 404 Media, the need for robot umpires, and bringing on a new regular contributor to the site.

EMANUEL: Something that I couldn’t help but think about a lot this week was how easily one of the worst parts of working at a big company like VICE was the regular layoffs. It’s been on my mind because a cruel aspect of the job was that whenever there was some kind of cataclysmic event in the economy—COVID, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, etc—we had the unique pleasure of having to closely follow and cover news that could and often would ultimately result in members of our teams getting laid off. 

We worked hard and did our jobs as best we could but we could also feel the axe about to fall, usually in the form of an email from upper management about “economic headwinds” or something like that, followed by a brutal day of slowly finding out who still had a job. Donald Trump’s tariffs and their manic fluctuating between total global trade war to more limited but still devastating focus on China, stocks taking a nosedive, companies announcing they’re going to stop doing some business in the US, and CEOs putting everything on hold until we’re out of this zone of “economic uncertainty,” put out strong “headwinds” vibes this week.