Our Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

At Lifewire, we’ve done far too little for far too long.

We continue to have too few BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) editors, writers, photographers, and illustrators. Our content strategy efforts have not consistently considered the unique technology challenges of BIPOC communities. We had never, until late 2020, systematically reviewed our existing content for racial bias.

It's absolutely unacceptable that it took us this long to make these things the important parts of our business they should have always been. Continuing to address these issues is the core of our ongoing commitment.

Our Commitment

We will diversify our teams. Our content is written, edited, and managed by teams of staff and freelancers, all of which must be more diverse. By March 31, 2023, we pledge that 20% of our greater team will be composed of BIPOC editors, writers, reviewers, and other creatives.
We will educate ourselves. We will continue educating ourselves about the challenges and experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other communities so we can both address those issues in our workplace and inform our readers, too. By March 31, 2023, we pledge to have completed editorial training around preventing bias in our writing and editing.
We will audit our existing content for racial bias. Most of our content is evergreen, meaning people find and read it long after it was originally published, so it’s important that we look closely at our existing library. By March 31, 2023, we pledge to review (and update as needed) content representing 95% of our traffic for racial bias in our text, photography, and illustrations.

We will better organize our content around the digital divide and other technology challenges facing BIPOC. Technology is more than a smartphone or tablet; it’s also about people and their levels of access to the internet, hardware, education, security, and more. By March 31, 2023, we commit to organizing our existing collection of content in this area into a dedicated, easy-to-find section on our site.
We will continue to showcase BIPOC creatives and technology businesses on our site so that more people can hear their stories, read their work, and become more aware of the technology challenges faced by so many in our society.

This is not the end of our commitment. We will continue to educate ourselves and expect our goals to expand over time, especially as we diversify the voices on our team.

We also know there is no progress without accountability so we promise to be fully transparent and provide, on a quarterly basis, a detailed update on the status of our goals that quarter. You’ll find those updates below.

Please let us know at feedback@lifewire.com if you have additional ideas about how we can continue to improve.

Sincerely,

Tim, Sally, Bob, Jerri, Rob, Kyree, Molly, and Kevin
Lifewire Editorial Team

Black Lives Matter!

Update: Q2 2022

In 2022, we continue to work with Dotdash's Anti-Bias Review Board to review content to evaluate its inclusivity and ensure that its language, images, and content live up to our pledge to fight against racism and oppression.

By September 30, 2022, we pledge that 20% of our greater team will be composed of BIPOC editors, writers, reviewers, and other creatives.

By September 30, 2022, we pledge to have completed professionally recognized editorial training around preventing bias in our writing and editing.

People:

By September 30, 2022, we pledge that 20% of our greater team will be composed of BIPOC editors, writers, reviewers, and other creatives. We are currently at 13%.

Content:

By September 30, 2022, we pledge to have completed professionally recognized editorial training around preventing bias in our writing and editing. We have not completed this training currently.
By September 30, 2022, we pledge to review (and update as needed) content representing 95% of our traffic for racial bias in our text, photography, and illustrations. We have currently reviewed 83%.
By September 30, 2022, we commit to organizing our existing collection of content in this area into a dedicated, easy-to-find section on our site. We are currently working on this as part of a site-wide initiative.

Community:

By the end of the quarter, we will have researched potential partnerships in technology to address the digital divide. We continue to research and discuss this with internal and external teams.

Update: Q1 2022

In 2022, we will continue to work with Dotdash's Anti-Bias Review Board to review content to evaluate its inclusivity and ensure that its language, images, and content live up to our pledge to fight against racism and oppression.

People:

By June 30, 2022, we pledge that 20% of our greater team will be composed of BIPOC editors, writers, reviewers, and other creatives. We are currently at 19%.

Content:

By March 31, 2022, we pledge to have completed professionally recognized editorial training around preventing bias in our writing and editing. We have not completed this goal.
By June 30, 2022, we pledge to review (and update as needed) content representing 95% of our traffic for racial bias in our text, photography, and illustrations. We have reviewed 83%.
By March 31, 2022, we commit to organizing our existing collection of content in this area into a dedicated, easy-to-find section on our site. This is in progress.

Community:

By the end of the quarter, we will have researched potential partnerships in technology to address the digital divide. We continue to research and discuss this internally.

Update: Q3 2021

Since June of 2020, the Lifewire team has spent many hours learning about the challenges members of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community face. We’ve done so by attending Dotdash Meredith-led diversity seminars and meetings, and becoming part of diverse company groups to help us understand the experience of racism, as well as the challenges faced by underrepresented communities.

We’ve also been talking with friends and neighbors about the problems they face, and actively brainstorming ways to help expose how technology can both contribute to the problems, as well as help alleviate them.

To address our four primary commitments, as of September 30, 2021:

We will diversify our teams.

Our team is currently comprised of 14% BIPOC with a goal of 20%.

Although we actively sought BIPOC and other diverse candidates, the applicant pool did not provide us with any diverse options over the last quarter.

We continue to struggle in this area and are now looking at ways to reach out to various communities to see where we might be able to foster higher levels of inclusion in technology fields to improve the number of diverse applicants for our open roles.

We have additional roles open to fill in our fourth quarter and beyond and expect our efforts to help us attract more BIPOC candidates.

We will educate ourselves.

We have not completed our training as this is a new goal for our team.

The team is looking forward to learning how we can better elevate voices and avoid biases in our writing and editing.

We expect our initial training to complete by March 31, 2022.

We will audit our existing content for racial bias.

We have audited 83% of our content for bias in text, photography, and illustration.

We significantly exceeded our previous goal of 40% but continue to push forward. We have also created a new, daily process of spot-checking new and updated content.

As part of our reviews, we identified one area where we can really make a difference. Specifically, we can improve the representation of BIPOC on our site by expanding our imagery to show more diverse audiences using technology products.

As part of this improvement, we pledge to never retouch or edit photos of our writers, contributors, and/or product testers to ensure real skin tone and texture are always represented.

We will better organize our content around the digital divide and other technology challenges facing BIPOC.

We have not yet organized this content into a dedicated section as this is a new goal for our team.

We're excited to bring all of this great content together in a sharable, easy-to-locate place on Lifewire so more people can enjoy it.

A few of our favorite pieces recently include Steven Lee Helps Caregivers Connect Through Tech and How Jay Veal Wants to Improve Tutoring in BIPOC Communities.

Our next update, applicable to Q4 2021, will be provided here on or before March 31, 2022.

Contact Us