This week, about 1,000 journalists lost their jobs in the mainstream US media. These are news reporters, writers, editors and other media staff. Many more are expected to be laid off in the coming days, and the development is sending jitters down the spine of many media workers.
Earlier this week, Garnnett laid off 400 workers. The company operates over 1,000 daily and weekly newpapers across the US. BuzzFeed was reported to be planning to lay off 15% of its workers, and Verizon announced that 7% of its staff would have to go. Verizon owns HuffPost, Yahoo and AOL.
Later this week, HuffPost laid off about 20 of its staff, among this Jason Cherkis – a Pulitzer Prize finalist. BuzzFeed took the hint and began sacking many of its workers, including entire verticals and even the national news desk. A source said BuzzFeed laid off 43 staff with earlier reports saying the company intends to send away a minimum 200 people.
Most of those retrenched were dedicated employees of their respective organizations and many of them took to Twitter to announcement their sack.
Marisa Carroll, who spent 4 years at BuzzFeed News tweeted that “I was laid off along with the rest of the national team and many more brilliant reporters and editors.” Kovie Biakolo, Louis Peitzman and Alanna Bennett along several others at BuzzFeed were also disengaged.
Carolina J. Moreno spent over 6 years at Huffington Post and also got laid off, and she used the opportunity of her tweet to seek for other media engagement. Laura Bassett also spent 8 years at HuffPost and was “laid off along with some of my incredible colleagues.”
Many of the media companies told their sacked staff the retrenchment was necessary because of the need to restructure and invest in other resources. But analysts believe the media-wide retrenchment is not unconnected with Facebook and Google’s monopolization of digital ad growth. They also blame poor management decisions for the mass retrenchment.
“This isn’t happening because of market inefficiencies or consumer preferences or social value,” HuffPost senior reporter Zach Carter tweeted. “It’s happening because two very large companies have taken the advertising revenue that journalism outlets rely on and replaced it with nothing.”