Carrot Creative was a success story. The digital advertising agency was founded by three college students in a Connecticut basement in 2005, and it hustled its way to the top, eventually being bought by Vice Media in 2013 for about $15 million.
But Carrot’s company culture apparently never really left that basement.
On Tuesday, Carrot cofounder and Vice digital chief Mike Germano left the company following an investigation into sexual misconduct. Carrot is now going to be folded into Virtue, Vice’s in-house creative agency. Germano’s removal followed a New York Times investigation in December that described Vice Media’s problematic culture for women. The report included two specific allegations against the executive.
Since then, current and former employees at Carrot have spoken with Business Insider and described a workplace that, they said, was littered with sexism and misogyny. Nine women described instances of sexual misconduct that they experienced, witnessed, or were told about, including lewd language used toward women in public settings and unwanted physical contact.
To read more about Carrot’s hostile culture toward women, click here.
In other news:
ALPHABET EARNINGS PREVIEW: A monster quarter tainted by YouTube's nasty year. Alphabet, Google's parent company, reports earnings Thursday and may have to address questions about abuse of its platforms, even as it continues to deliver impressive financial results.
Facebook beat Wall Street expectations in its fourth-quarter results announced yesterday, but it announced a significant decline in usage of its service and what may be the first-ever drop in daily users in the US. The amount of time users are spending on the site declined by 50 million hours a day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
Facebook just dropped a big hint that the News Feed's days may be numbered. Stories, which are short photo slideshows or collections of videos, are on track to overtake regular news feed posts as the most common form of social sharing across apps, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday.
There's a rift growing between what Wall Street and the rest of the world thinks about Facebook - and only one side will win. Even though much of the public and media may have soured on the social network, Wall Street remains bullish on the company's capability to grow.
Facebook's usage decline should have investors worried - no matter what Mark Zuckerberg says. In its fourth-quarter earnings report Wednesday, Facebook reported a 5% drop in daily usage of its service.
The media industry has officially broken up with Facebook. Vox Media is the latest media company to call out Facebook for not providing a great way for publishers to earn money.
Univision sees a 'tremendous opportunity' in bringing big brands to the Hispanic market. Last week Univision brought on digital veteran Lisa Valentino from Conde Nast to help ramp up ad sales.
Pandora is laying off 5% of its staff and shifting its focus away from California because it's too expensive. It wants to expand its presence in Atlanta, Georgia due to a lower cost of living.
Amazon is reportedly on the hook for four more Woody Allen movies, and is considering a "hefty payout" to kill the deal.Allen has recently come under renewed scrutiny over allegations that he sexually abused his adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow, when she was seven years old.
GDPR could wipe 2% from Google's revenues, according to Deutsche Bank.The European Union's new privacy and data protection act comes into force in May.
More than a million followers have disappeared from the accounts of high-profile Twitter users in recent days, the New York Times reports. The Times published its investigation into companies that sell fake followers last week.
The publisher of Newsweek and the International Business Times has been buying traffic and engaging in ad fraud, BuzzFeed reports.Following the story, Newsweek reported that the chairman and financial chief of Newsweek Media Group had stepped down.
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