Cnn, Vox, Washington Post. All layoffs in American media
After CNN, the mass layoffs hit Vox, Buzzfeed, the Washington Post and other US media giants. Here are the details
Winter has come with a blizzard of layoffs for the American media.
After CNN fired some employees last December, the layoffs have now hit Vox Media, Buzzfeed, the Washington Post and others, an AFP report reveals.
Gannett, a behemoth that owns dozens of local media outlets along with USA Today , began its latest round of layoffs Thursday, FoxBusiness reveals. The cost-cutting effort has impacted approximately 6 percent of the company's journalism workforce of approximately 3,440 employees.
Vox Media, owner of the sites Vox , The Verge , SBNation and since 2019 of the prestigious New York Magazine , sent an email to employees signed by editor Jim Bankoff on Friday, announcing “the difficult decision to remove approximately 7% of our staff in all departments”, including the editorial staff, “due to a difficult economic context”. Approximately 1,900 people work in the company, which means that approximately 133 roles will be involved.
If the layoffs of newspapers do not have the scope of the announcements of large tech groups such as Google (12,000 job cuts), the American media are also feeling the effects "of the drop in advertising revenue and the slowdown of the economy", Chris explains to AFP Roush, professor of journalism and dean of the school of communication at Quinnipiac University (Connecticut). “Many of them have grown and branched out in hopes of growing their audience to a certain level. That has not happened and is unlikely to happen given the economic backdrop,” Rousch added.
All the details.
LAYOUTS STARTED BY VOX MEDIA
“Despite the dedication of the many talented people involved in these initiatives, we need to scale back,” Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff explains in an internally sent memo reviewed by Axios . Bankoff said several revenue, editorial, operations and core services teams would be impacted by the cuts.
This is the third round of cuts made to Vox Media in the last year, Axios explains.
The company fired 39 positions last July in an effort to get ahead of the economic uncertainty that is causing the advertising market to slow down.
It laid off 3% of employees following the completion of its merger with Group Nine Media last March.
Vox Media responded to AFP that the group was offering "competitive severance packages", including additional weeks of benefits in the event of impending parental leave.
CNN CUTS…
At CNN , the total layoffs in December would have reached several hundred employees according to the American media (out of over 4,000), figures that the company has not confirmed, however. The cuts stem from the retooling after the merger between WarnerMedia ( CNN, HBO Max ) and Discovery, which formed media and streaming giant Warner Bros. Discovery.
In April, the group ditched its paid streaming service CNN+, just one month after its launch.
With viewers and pay-cable subscribers in decline for years and competition from platforms like Netflix, "it's a constant struggle for these companies to hang on," said Naveen Sarma, director of US media and telecommunications at S&P Global.
…AND THOSE IN BUZZFEED
Additionally, press reports indicate that the Buzzfeed layoffs are also expected to impact approximately 12% of employees in the sales, technology, production and content teams.
REDUCED JOURNALISTS IN AMERICAN NEWS
Newsroom employment has experienced a long decline in the United States, falling from 114,000 to 85,000 reporters between 2008 and 2020, according to a Pew Research Center study in 2021. With a steeper decline in the local press.
THE NEXT WASHINGTON POST SCISSOR
In addition, an announcement is also feared in The Washington Post , where editor Fred Ryan warned in mid-December that job cuts would take place during the first quarter of 2023, representing "a single-digit percentage" of the 2,500 employees. , but without “hard scaling”.
The newspaper purchased in 2013 by the billionaire founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos had already announced last December that it would end printing the Sunday magazine supplement, winner of two Pulitzer prizes in 2008 and 2010. The number released on December 25, 2022 was the 'last .
In a statement last December to CNN , Kathy Baird, head of communications at The Post , confirmed news of the looming cuts, saying the paper was "evolving and transforming to put our business in the best position for future growth." .
While The Washington Post hasn't confirmed a firm number of employees to be laid off, some reports suggest that official updates are expected this month.
TELEVISION NETWORKS ALSO HIT
Finally, some television networks are also planning cost-cutting measures during the winter. NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News and MSNBC , laid off about 75 employees in January, according to a CNN report. Similarly, ABC News ' parent company The Walt Disney Company is planning cuts under the leadership of Bob Iger, who recently returned as the company's chief executive officer .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/cnn-vox-washington-post-tutti-i-licenziamenti-nei-media-americani/ on Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:46:43 +0000.