"Heads were chopped almost every week". Part of editorial office resigned from Bukvy

Photo credit: "Bukvy"

Part of the editorial team resigned from the publication of "Bukvy". Former newswire editor Anastasiya Pechenyuk wrote about this on Facebook.

"Today, the vast majority of employees of the "Bukvy" felt an irresistible desire and decided to leave. We are grateful to the co-owners of the publication for the experience and the platform with which they could improve oneself professionally, but the events of recent days force us to undertake such a step.

We strongly disagree with the aggressive behavior of readers on social media (…), with a constant pressure, threats and harassment of employees of the publication - both those present and those who left.

The constant change of editorial policy in terms of content selection did not add enthusiasm and motivation to work.

Realizing that we do not have a chance to understand each other, to achieve respect for each of us, we immediately left the project, "she wrote.

Anastasia posted screenshots of a similar message on the Facebook page "Bukvy", but at the time of writing it has already been deleted.

At the request of the Institute of Mass Information, Anastasia clarified that four editors of the news wire had resigned: there were her, Olga Ganyukova, Yana Ilkiv and Marta Bondarenko. As well as two employees of the SMM-department, who worked for more than five years.

“But one needs to see the context: before it happened, heads were chopped almost every week. Some were fired by the management, some quitted by their own free will, because they could not endure it anymore. About 10 people have left in recent months (except for those who resigned today).

Every day we were facing an aggressive behavior and threats to be dismissed. We read that we are mediocre people, (we got some –n/tr) "friendly reminders", that actually they paid us money, that it is easy to replace us, because there is a "sea of ​​VCs". This was a mobbing, to put it shortly.

Of course, we tried to talk about it. To say that more respectful and adequate tone is needed for an efficacious cooperation, but it did not work.

This, in fact, led to dismissals. At first, they went one by one.

However, none of the people whom "Bukvy" said goodbye to recently, unfortunately, was able to simply end such cooperation. Without emotional statements addressed to him, harassment of the public of various scales. There were also cases of extortion from relatives of former employees, sudden deductions from the "farewell" salary, slander, common within the editorial office.

This forced us to take such a step: to leave in a group, at the same time. Patience has run out.

Some employees have decided to continue working here, which can be seen from the behavior of the pages on social networks and from the fact that our posts were deleted. We respect their decision, we hope they will respect the ours. We also hope for positive changes in the work of Bukvy with the new team, ”Anastasia Pechenyuk told IMI.

Dismissed employees are accepting offers of cooperation.

IMI asked Peter Terentyev, co-owner of Bukvy, for a comment, and he promised to provide it later.