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https://www.cjr.org/feature/military-dot-com-valnet-purchase-sale-vanquishing-monster-defense.phpIn June, when Steve Beynon learned that a Canadian media company called Valnet was buying his employer, Military.com, he had no idea what that meant. “And then I googled them,” Beynon said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, this is the worst-case scenario.’”
As Beynon, who was the chair of the newsroom’s union, quickly learned, when Valnet acquires a media outlet, it typically lays off most of the staff and replaces them with contractors. Valnet recently sued The Wrap in US District Court in Delaware, alleging it was defamed by reporting on alleged exploitative labor practices at several of Valnet’s entertainment sites, including unrealistic work quotas and blacklists for those who complained. The Wrap has moved to dismiss the 64.5-million-dollar suit. “We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against a nuisance lawsuit that is intended to disrupt our ability to honestly report,” Sharon Waxman, The Wrap’s founder and editor in chief, said.
Beynon and several of his coworkers at Military.com, which has reported on the US military for a quarter century, braced for impact. Once Valnet took over, the company laid off staffers in waves and the site stopped publishing the in-depth news coverage for which it had long been known, multiple former staffers said. “Why buy this thing only to run it into the ground?” said a former Military.com staffer who left before the sale. “It was unnecessary, and military and service members are now in a poorer place because of it.”
(snip)
Founded in 1999, Military.com made a name for itself covering issues affecting active-duty service members and veterans, investing significant resources in stories that mainstream outlets and even other trade publications tended not to touch. As is common on the military beat, many of the site’s staffers were veterans themselves, which gave them insights into the most critical challenges facing their audience. “We carved a niche for ourselves in the trade press community as being the only outlet that would speak for the service members,” the former staffer who left before the sale said.
Before the sale, according to a former member of the site’s senior leadership team, Military.com had a newsroom staff of seventeen people, and averaged between twelve and fourteen million page views per month. Military.com won awards and earned the respect of high-ranking officials such as Christine Wormuth, who served as secretary of the Army under the Biden administration. “It was Military.com and Task & Purpose that really shined a light on the kinds of issues that were affecting soldiers and families in their daily lives,” Wormuth said, pointing to Military.com’s reporting on topics including food quality on bases and military daycare waiting lists.
(snip)
Before the sale was finalized, some Military.com staffers tried to raise the alarm. The editorial staff had unionized in 2024 but had yet to reach a contract. On June 27, the union wrote to Mark Nelson, Monster’s media division vice president at the time, expressing concern that Military.com was about to be sold to a company with no discernible interest in journalism whose founder, Hassan Youssef, got his start with his brother in the online porn business, launching sites like Jugg World and XXX Rated Chicks.
(snip)
Former Military.com staffers aren’t sure why Valnet wanted to buy their site in the first place, since it has little in common with the more than two dozen other sites Valnet owns, including Screen Rant, Polygon, HotCars, and TheRichest. Hard-news sites are not part of the portfolio. “That’s the puzzle of this whole thing,” Beynon said.
Some former staffers wondered whether Valnet was really after Military.com’s lengthy mailing list, which could generate considerable revenue through lead generation and ad sales. Others told themselves that maybe Valnet wanted a legitimate news outlet as a way to polish its image—or, some hoped, as part of a pivot to serious reporting. “That’s definitely not what happened,” Beynon said. “We knew we were bleep pretty much a week or two after the purchase.”
EXCERPT
Well this is a crying shame...Military.com did good work on the defense and veterans fronts.
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"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." ---George Orwell
