Teen Vogue was swallowed whole by Vogue.com this week—and the entire Teen Vogue political desk was reportedly laid off near the end of the Monday workday, effectively immediately.

Posts abound on social media about the groundbreaking impact that Teen Vogue had on its readership—and about the incredible numbers the political desk consistently brought to the publication. Simply put, their regular political coverage has been a bright spot in a churning sea of bullshit since at least 2017. Now, it appears, those days are over.

It was never about the numbers, though. It never is. You can bring insane audience engagement, break records on views, court new eyeballs to your verticals, shape the national and international conversation with accurate, empathetic, even funny coverage of the important topics that are dominating our minds these days; get new laws passed by exposing the ill-treatment of regular-ass people, etc., etc., etc.; you can win awards—Pulitzers, Murrow Awards, Emmys—champion new ways of Doing The News, including maybe even swallowing your pride and misgivings about giving up editorial control to a goddamn AI fact-checker, and on and on and on—and they will still nuke your job and your entire desk in the name of capital consolidation and kissing the fucking ring.

I’d not have thought to seek out Teen Vogue as a news source, but their political coverage was outstanding. I got the impression that it was great reporters and writers needing to collect a few bylines to get to the big leagues.

It’s a loss, but that’s basically every day in American journalism.