‘Toxic’: Over a Dozen Current, Former Employees Describe ‘Culture of Fear’ Under TheWrap CEO Sharon Waxman
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Former employees say TheWrap founder and CEO Sharon Waxman runs “a toxic environment” at the entertainment and media site, creating a “culture of fear” that is “demoralizing and degrading.”
The employees made the comments to the Daily Beast, who in their report write that Waxman said she “was very sorry to learn that some current and former employees have had experiences at TheWrap that are not consistent with our values or the environment we work to foster.”
The profile contains shocking anecdotes shared by current and former staff, including this from the opening:
It’s like a scene from a bad Hollywood movie: an employee takes off a few hours from work to bring his fiancée to the oncologist for a cancer check-up, only to have the tyrannical boss call and curse him out for slacking off.
Only, according to one former employee of the entertainment and media news site TheWrap, it really happened.
An unnamed ex-employee said that Waxman rules “with an iron fist.” Another made a movie comparison: “It was very The Devil Wears Prada. It was really demoralizing and degrading. I would have to emotionally shut down and smile and nod.”
Daily Beast points out that the company, under Waxman’s leadership, has had some success.
As the founder, chief executive, top editor, and public face of TheWrap, Waxman, 58, reigns over every aspect of the digital outlet.
In just 12 years, under her stewardship, TheWrap has established itself as one of Hollywood’s most influential and widely read trade publications, competing directly with mainstays like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Besides producing numerous entertainment scoops, the scrappy outlet has won a number of journalism awards in recent years.
Still, the comments from staffers are relentlessly critical, with some saying they were “terrified” of her, or relating stories about indifference or malice. One went so far as to say Waxman is “one of the most awful people that I have known in my life.”
“I’ve been around CEOs and politicians and like, actually important powerful people, and people that should be scary, like prisoners, and she is the scariest person I’ve ever met,” another former writer said about Waxman.
The exhaustive article continues in that fashion, interspersing commentary from mostly former employees with details of TheWrap’s ups and downs. Eventually they note that Deputy Editor Thom Grier suggested that the whole thing, including Daily Beast’s article itself, are the product of a conspiracy involving media mogul Jay Penske:
I’d be curious to know how many of the people that you’ve spoken to who have complained about Sharon Waxman and TheWrap are now working for Jay Penske…I’m fascinated by the notion that, you know, there are people who went to work for Sharon and then went to work for Jay Penske. And you know we’re the last of the independent trades, and the only one that isn’t funded by a Saudi government that murders journalists.
I mean … wow. And this really ain’t even the half of it.
Read the rest here at the Daily Beast.
