Corporate media lays off hundreds of journalists and employees

10/02/2024 / By Ava Grace

Hundreds of journalists and employees have already been laid off this year by corporate media companies.

The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated, Business Insider, New York Daily News, National Geographic and the Baltimore Sun have all been in the news for wrong reasons – layoffs, cost-cutting, labor walkouts or bleak prognosticating. Significant cuts were seen at the Los Angeles Times, which reduced its newsroom staff by more than 20 percent in January. Time magazine also fired 15 percent of its workforce.

Over the last 12 months, an estimated 500 journalist positions have been eliminated. (Related: Public loses trust in mainstream media, causing outlets to drastically reduce cut their operations through LAYOFFS.)

Patty Stonesifer, CEO of the Washington Post, announced that 120 employees at the liberal newspaper have accepted a buyout, which is the voluntary ending of the employment term. The Bezos-owned corporate news outlet informed staff they would need another 120 employees to accept a buyout over the next two weeks, otherwise layoffs will be implemented. The paper is believed to have around 2,500 employees in total.

“We want everyone to understand that we need 240 acceptances to help restore the Post‘s financial health,” Stonesifer wrote in the memo. “We have made the decision, if we fall short of this goal, to implement involuntary layoffs in those areas where we have already identified that positions do not need to be replaced, where work can be reassigned more efficiently or where we can otherwise achieve cost savings.”

Meanwhile, since taking over the corporate news network late last year, CEO Mark Thompson has bounced between cost-cutting measures and revenue schemes seemingly aimed to accelerate CNN’s descent into irrelevance. The National Pulse reported in January that the network is considering ways to make people pay to watch news clips on their cell phones as people increasingly turn away from cable news.

The online media sector is a victim of the crisis, too. Critics have noted the declining web readership at many major publishers over the past year, as tech giants try to keep consumers on their platforms.

Media company Paramount Global also announced layoffs, targeting a three percent reduction in its global workforce. In August, it laid off 15 percent of its U.S. staff and shuttered Paramount Television Studios. Disney Entertainment also announced 140 layoffs, affecting departments such as National Geographic. Moreover, Fox Entertainment cut 30 positions in July, impacting various divisions.

Many Americans distrust mass media

In 2023, it was reported that only 32 percent of Americans trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way. That tied Gallup’s lowest historical reading, previously recorded in 2016. The numbers in the previous two years were not much better, 36 percent in 2021 and 34 percent in 2022.

Worse, 39 percent of Americans surveyed in 2023 said they did not trust the mass media at all. It marks the highest on record by one percentage point, and 12 points higher than the 2016 reading. Meaning, the most recent assessment of the mass media is the grimmest in Gallup’s history.

CNN‘s Thompson summed it up in letter he wrote to staff on Jan. 17: “The traditional TV universe is shrinking steadily. The shift from linear broadcast to digital means that the audience for all news channels on U.S. cable has fallen by roughly a fifth in just the past two years.”

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