Visual journalist Pedro Vega, Jr. had his resignation letter ready. It was dated May 5, a Friday. Ebony still owed him about $10,000 for work he had done as a freelance designer before he joined the staff full-time as creative director in February, trusting the magazine would make him whole, Vega tells CJR.
But on May 4, Vega got a call from the human resources division at Clear View Group, the entirely black-owned Texas-based private equity firm that bought Ebony last year. Ebony was “restructuring,” Vega was told, and he would no longer have a job. He called his boss, Editor in Chief Kyra Kyles, who told him she didn’t know what was going down.
By Friday, the day Vega had planned to resign, the Chicago Tribune reported Ebony was laying off almost a third of its editorial staff and downsizing its Chicago…
