A behind-the-scenes look at how BI reporter Rachel Premack revealed a toxic culture at Bon Appétit for its employees and contributors of color
- Business Insider is taking you behind the scenes of our best stories with the series "The Inside Story."
- Business Insider content marketing producer Vilan Trub this week interviewed reporter Rachel Premack about her series of stories on cultural problems at Condé Nast's prestigious Bon Appétit title under editor in chief Adam Rapoport.
- According to Premack's sources, Bon Appétit did not provide nonwhite employees the same opportunities on the brand's video side that white employees enjoyed, excluded nonwhite employees from social and professional groups, and regularly misrepresented or did not represent stories from nonwhite backgrounds.
- Premack discusses what inspired her to pursue the story and how the willingness of Bon Appétit staff members to speak out surprised her.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Vilan Trub: How did you stumble upon this story at Bon Appétit?
Rachel Premack: While I was in quarantine I spent a lot of time watching Bon Appétit test-kitchen videos and found it interesting that those working in the test kitchens have to find a way to make their personalities known. And unlike my colleagues at Business Insider, when we're writing something or when we're publishing something it's not our personalities or even our ethnicities being judged — it's just the content of our reporting and whatnot.
The test-kitchen stars have a very "one big happy family" feel to the videos. I thought maybe there was something beneath that, that wasn't immediately apparent, so I talked to a few colleagues at BI. One of them happened to be connected at the test kitchen, confirmed what I was saying, and that's how the interview started, or that's how this whole process started. So I talked to that test-kitchen member of the talent and just start getting connected to more and more people from there.
Trub: What really inspired you to keep digging on the story? How did you know it was worth your time to keep pursuing?
Premack: I've covered various issues at other companies — Amazon, various trucking companies — and people tend to be very hesitant to go on the record even if their quotes would be used anonymously. People are hesitant to even respond to a journalist. But for me when I was doing the initial reach-out to people, people were very willing to talk and people were also very willing to go on the record. So, and this was weeks before Bon Appétit was in the spotlight already due to Adam stepping down and the photo that Tammie the food writer found of Adam in brownface.
It was definitely the people who I was talking to early on in the process who were willing to put their names on the story, willing to back up their quotes by going on the record or even anonymously speaking. Their willingness to put their careers on the lines to try to improve the place and try to make other people of color in the food-journalism world aware of what's going on — that I think is what drove me to continue this weeks-long process even before it was really known to the rest of the world outside of certain circles what's going on there.
Trub: Did the inequality that you learned about through your research process at Bon Appétit seem like it was something that was isolated at that brand or that it might be a bigger culture problem within Condé Nast?
Premack: Definitely the latter. I think what's going on at Bon Appétit is definitely a very extreme example in a market area where Condé Nast is clearly failing employees of color. But I've gotten messages from people at various other brands within Condé Nast about issues going at their companies, at their publications as well. And then a few weeks after the Bon Appétit story published I actually wrote something about Condé Nast Entertainment, which is the video arm of Condé Nast, and there are definitely other racial issues there that are pretty pervasive.
Trub: We live in an age where because of modern technology and social media everyone can pretty much voice their opinion, and it creates this giant cloud of noise. How do you wade through that noise and distinguish between the usual airing of grievances that employees might have versus what potentially might turn out to be a real story?
Premack: Well, on one hand the issues at Bon Appétit were pretty well-known among especially writers of color in the food-media world. This is something they had been talking about within their own circles, also on Twitter. So, in that situation it's something that was already known — like an open secret in some way.
No one coming out with a story like this is doing it for fun, because there's no real career benefit that can come from making your complaints known like that.
But the interesting thing about the social-media chatter about Bon Appétit until a month or two ago was that it was all very, very overwhelmingly positive. There are fan accounts dedicated to individual stars — there's subreddits where people draw pictures of the test-kitchen stars. It's almost like a rabid cult-like fan community that popped up around these people who were until a few years ago just typical food editors or typical food writers. So, I almost had in some way the opposite experience, where I was like, "There's so much positivity around this brand it might be really challenging to find people who will speak out." But then ultimately people did speak out, people did reveal issues that they were having.
Trub: How do you think about the impact of this story?
Premack: It definitely shows the power of many people coming together deciding that they're sick of a certain institution and deciding to speak out on it. And sometimes when that happens people still don't listen and change still doesn't come.
So for me, it's just the power of when something is an open secret. We've seen so many areas where something is an open secret but still change doesn't happen just because it's not being reported on, put to paper or the web, or just really fully documented in the public sphere in that way. So, looking at the Harvey Weinstein story — that was something that "everyone" in entertainment knew about, but no one was really doing anything because it wasn't revealed in that same way that journalism can reveal an issue and thoroughly document it and whatnot.
The story shows that change can happen. It's not to be assumed, it doesn't always happen, but it is possible sometimes.