Yesterday, Netflix laid off some of its staff, many of them recently hired women of color. They were working on its new fan-focused website.

Transcript

ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:

Yesterday, Netflix laid off some of its staff, many of them recently hired women of color. They were working on its new fan-focused website. NPR culture correspondent Mandalit del Barco is here to talk us through the news. Hey, Mandalit.

MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Hello.

SCHMITZ: Tell us about this website, Tudum.

DEL BARCO: Tudum. Well, first you should know it was named for the sound of the Netflix logo.

(SOUNDBITE OF NETFLIX STARTUP SOUND)

DEL BARCO: Tudum - it's an onomatopoeia. And that website just launched in December to take fans behind the streams, as they put it, with articles about shows and films on Netflix. On Tudum today...

SCHMITZ: (Laughter).

DEL BARCO: ...Is a feature on the toddlers in the Japanese reality show "Old Enough." And there's a scoop on the final episodes of "Frankie And Grace" (ph), a rundown of who's crushing on whom in the teen series "Heartstopper." There's a feature about the history of the food in "Bridgerton" Season 2 and another highlighting the show's slow-burn romantic moments.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BRIDGERTON")

JONATHAN BAILEY: (As Anthony Bridgerton) You are the bane of my existence and the object of all my desires. Night and day, I dream of you.

DEL BARCO: Swoon.

(LAUGHTER)

DEL BARCO: A lot of people say they didn't even know that Tudum existed until now and that Netflix hasn't really promoted the site very much.

SCHMITZ: Yeah. I mean, I didn't know what Tudum was, either. And now that you've told me, I cannot get that Tudum sound out of my head. Did Netflix say why they laid off the workers at Tudum?

DEL BARCO: Well, apparently the writers and editors were told that the layoffs were part of Netflix's restructuring of its marketing department. And, you know, this comes just days after news that the streamer has lost subscribers and that its stocks took a nosedive. When I asked Netflix for comment about the layoffs, a spokesperson sent a message saying that Tudum is, quote, "an important priority for the company." You know, the site is still up, but it was just one team of writers and editors that got let go.

SCHMITZ: So Mandalit, tell us more about this team and what they did.

DEL BARCO: So it was 10 or 12 writers and editors who worked on the culture and trends section of the site, and they were all very experienced journalists who had previously worked for Vice, Teen Vogue, Vulture, The New York Times. Some were book authors, or they had their own pop culture podcasts. And most of them, if not all of the team, were Black, Latinx and Asian American women of color.

I had a long talk last night with one of the team members who was let go. They said they signed a non-disclosure agreement when they were hired, so we're not using their name. But off the record, they said that they'd all been hired - they'd all been recruited, that is - recruited heavily by Netflix with promises of editorial independence, exclusive interviews with Netflix talent - the actors, the filmmakers and so on - and, very importantly, secure jobs that paid very well. The person I spoke to said at first it seemed like a dream job, but it quickly devolved into little more than a marketing gig for Netflix.

SCHMITZ: So what do we know about their situation right now?

DEL BARCO: Well, these writers and editors were on contract or on staff, and they said they had no notice before they lost their jobs. And they were offered just two weeks of severance pay. The person I talked to said many of them had upended their lives to work for Netflix just a few months ago, and now they're scrambling to find new jobs. You can see their tweets about looking for work. But, you know, this isn't the first streamer to lay people off just in the last week alone. Something similar happened with CNN+.

SCHMITZ: Right.

DEL BARCO: But in that case, it wasn't just one team but the entire streaming service.

SCHMITZ: That's NPR's Mandalit del Barco. Mandalit, thanks so much.

DEL BARCO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.