Vox Media has fired Curbed founder and editorial director Lockhart Steele for inappropriate conduct, after former employee Eden Rohatensky recounted in a Medium post that he had caressed her hand and kissed her neck in the back of an Uber.
“I reported what had happened,” Rohatensky writes — though Steele is unnamed in the post, which also describes misconduct by more than one Vox employee, according to The Awl. “A year later, I found out that an investigation had been done. That he had multiple victims within the company. That his punishment was being told he could not drink at corporate events any longer. He had too many shares in the company. There was nothing they could do.”
“I can’t stress enough this is an ongoing investigation,” Vox CEO Jim Bankoff told staffers in a company-wide call, per The Awl. (Vox purchased Steele’s Curbed properties, including Curbed, Eater, and Racked, for roughly $25 million in 2013). “Even though there’s been a termination, it’s not concluded. There are still people coming forward, and I want to encourage people who have not come forward to do so as well.”
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
Bankoff added that the law firm Gibson Dunn was conducting an external investigation, and noted that the company had not previously settled any harassment cases.
Steele’s termination arrives as a wave of sexual harassment allegations against powerful male media executives — including Fox’s Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, producer Harvery Weinstein, Amazon Studios chief Roy Price, and ScreenJunkies creator Andy Signore — have come to the fore.
