From CNN to the Washington Post, US media are facing tough times as a number of outlets have announced layoffs this winter amid fears of an economic downturn.
Vox Media, owner of the websites Vox and The Verge as well as the pioneering New York Magazine and its online platforms, announced on Friday that it would lay off seven percent of its employees.
The news follows layoffs at CNN, NBC, MSNBC, Buzzfeed and other outlets.
In a memo to employees Friday, Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff announced “the difficult decision to eliminate approximately seven percent of our employee roles across departments due to the challenging economic environment impacting our business and industry.”
The memo, which was confirmed to AFP by Vox Media, said the affected employees would be notified of their dismissal within the next 15 minutes. That would be around 130 of the 1,900 employees of the group.
Meghan McCarron, an award-winning journalist who has spent more than nine years at Eater, a food website owned by Vox Media, tweeted on Friday that she was among those laid off – while she was 37 weeks pregnant.
“My partner and I are so excited to be parents,” McCarron wrote. “I can’t really process the uncertainty we’re facing now,” she added.
A Vox spokesman told AFP it could not comment on specific cases, but that employees were being offered “competitive severance packages,” including additional severance pay for those “planning to be on parental leave soon.”
Journalists who have been fired from other organizations in recent weeks have also taken to Twitter to express anger, dismay or gratitude to their colleagues as they look for a new job.
“I’ll think about my next move. I’m a data reporter, but I also write and produce,” tweeted Emily Siegel, who was fired after five years as an investigative reporter from NBC. “I would like to continue this work. Mine (direct messages) are open.”
– ‘Long time under pressure’ –
While the media layoffs weren’t as dramatic as those seen by rocking tech giants like Microsoft and Google, which on Friday announced they would cut 12,000 more jobs, they were a result of falling advertising revenues amid a gloomy economic climate, said Chris Roush, dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.
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“For many of them, it grew and expanded the expectation that they would be able to grow their audience or either readers or viewers to a certain level,” Roush told AFP. “And that just didn’t happen and is unlikely given what’s going on in the economy.”
According to a 2021 study by the Pew Research Center, newsroom employment in the United States has declined steadily, falling from 114,000 to 85,000 journalists between 2008 and 2020, with local media particularly hard hit.
“Journalism has long been under pressure, and a number of companies seem to think this is an opportune time to cut their labor costs – hurting both journalists and journalism,” said the Writers Guild of America, East, in a statement to AFP.
The union consists of journalists from NBC and MSNBC. The two outlets, which declined an AFP request for comment, said goodbye to about 75 employees, according to US media.
A similar announcement is feared at The Washington Post, where CEO Fred Ryan last month warned that “a number of jobs” will be cut in the coming weeks, adding that the layoffs would affect “a single-digit percentage of our workforce of 2,500 people.” . Hiring for other positions may continue, the newspaper said.
The Washington Post Magazine, the Sunday supplement for the newspaper that won two Pulitzer Prizes, shut down in December as part of what Editor-in-Chief Sally Buzbee described in a memo as the paper’s “global and digital transformation.”
And Nancy Dubuc, CEO of Vice Media, announced to her employees on Friday that the company is up for sale.
– “Steep, secular decline” –
According to US media, CNN has laid off an estimated several hundred workers out of a total of around 4,000 in recent months. CNN would not confirm those numbers to AFP.
The cuts came as the company was being restructured following a merger between Warner Media, which owns CNN and HBO Max, and Discovery. The merger resulted in the creation of the mega-conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery.
After the merger, CNN’s new parent company abruptly pulled the plug on the network’s $100 million streaming service, CNN+.
Naveen Sarma, senior media analyst at S&P Global Rating, noted a “precipitous, secular decline” in traditional broadcast and cable television in the United States, leading to a dramatic decline in pay-TV subscriptions.
“It’s a constant struggle for all these companies to get in,” Sarma said.
Quinnipiac University’s Roush says the changes have been particularly painful for smaller media outlets.
“CNN, Washington Post, they’re not going away, but smaller companies have bigger problems because they’re just smaller and not as well established as a media brand,” he said.
arb/md/caw
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