A new wave of layoffs shakes the US media

CNN, Vox Media, the Washington Post… the boreal winter is marked by a new wave of layoffs in the US media, amid a bleak economic climate and a slump in advertising.

“I am part of the group fired by @NBCInvestigates (NBC) (…) I will miss him, but I appreciate the time I spent here”, says Emily Siegel, who did not want to give more details after this tweet published on Wednesday.

Like her, several journalists from the newsrooms of NBC, the MSNBC group, or CNN, have used social networks to announce their layoffs in the last month.

On Friday, employees of Vox Media, which owns Vox, The Verge, SBNation and since 2019 the prestigious New York Magazine, received the same email from Chairman Jim Bankoff, announcing the “difficult decision to cut about 7% of our staff in all departments”, among them in the newsroom, “due to a difficult economic environment”.

“15 minutes”

The affected workers, about 130 out of 1,900, received a second message “15 minutes later” with the decision, according to said email.

Several announced their anger or frustration on social networks, such as Meghan McCarron, a journalist for “nine and a half years” for the specialized restaurant portal Eater, who was fired when she was “37 weeks” pregnant. Vox Media explained to AFP that the group offers “competitive compensation”, that is, additional weeks in the case of a close maternity leave.

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Although the layoffs are not of the caliber of those of big technology companies such as Google, which on Friday announced the cuts of 12,000 jobs, the US media is also affected by “falling advertising revenue and slowing economy”, explains to AFP Chris Roush, professor of journalism and dean of the school of communication at Quinnipiac University (Connecticut).

“Many grew and developed in the hope of increasing their audiences to certain levels. They did not succeed and there is little chance that they will succeed given the economic context”, he adds.

fewer journalists

Employment in newsrooms has fallen in the United States, going from 114,000 to 85,000 journalists between 2008 and 2020, according to a study by the Pew Research Center in 2021. The drop is greater in the local press.

“Journalism has been under pressure for some time and some companies seem to think that the time is right to cut labor costs.”, laments the Writers Guild of America East, which represents the NBC and MSNBC unions. In these two outlets, which did not respond to the AFP request, 75 employees have been fired, according to the US media.

The director of the Washington Post, Fred Ryan, already announced in mid-December that there would be layoffs in the first quarter of 2023, without specifying how many.

The editorial staff of the newspaper, owned since 2013 by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, learned on Christmas 2022 of the end of the Sunday supplement, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in 2008 and 2010.

Competence

In December, CNN reportedly fired several hundred employees according to the US media, data not confirmed by the chain. They took place as part of the reorganization following the merger between WarnerMedia (CNN, HBO Max) and Discovery, which created streaming giant Warner Bros. Discovery.

In April, the group abolished its service streaming paid CNN+, just one month after its launch.

After years of declining viewers and subscribers to pay cable television and competition from platforms such as Netflix, “these companies wage a constant struggle to resist”, says Naveen Sarma, director of the company S&P Global Ratings.

For Chris Roush, media like CNN or the Washington Post “they won’t go away but a smaller company will struggle as they are not as well established as a media brand“, Explain. And she cites in particular Buzzfeed, which in December laid off 12% of its staff, or Vice Media, whose CEO, Nancy Dubuc, announced her plan to sell the group on Friday to her employees.

Source: AFP