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Netflix’s sister site Tudum recently laid off a over a dozen of women of color after recruiting them just a few short months ago to launch this new website. On April 28, the team of culture and trend writers and editors, who were mostly Black, Latinx and Asian women, were terminated without any warning. To add insult into injury, they were only offered two weeks of severance pay.

Tudum is an entertainment website that is devoted to everything Netflix. These writers were hired to create content based on all of the films and series on the streaming service. For example, one writer who was laid off wrote an essay about Kanye West and grieving a parent based on the documentary Jeen-Yuhs. She was let go before it could even be published.

Tudum was launched in December 2021 and was staffed with experienced journalists with impressive publications like The New York Times, Vogue, Bustle and Vulture on their resumes. Some of them also double as authors.

“They went very out of their way to hire high level journalists of color who have quite a bit of name recognition and a lot of experience and talent. In some ways, they were just buying clout to lend credibility to their gambit,” one writer who couldn’t reveal their name due to a non-disclosure agreement told NPR.

The writer added that folks behind Tudum were recruiting editors and journalists from other sites by selling them a dream.

“We were courted pretty aggressively,” they added. “They sold us on the most amazing thing that you could want as a culture journalist or entertainment journalist. They just sold something that seemed impossible anywhere else. But the biggest selling point was the pay.”

All of the writers hired were full-time, part-time or on contract. Most of them had just been given promotions the month prior to lay-offs.

 

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