‘News deserts’ grow as US outlets slash 2,700 jobs: ‘We have suffered a huge loss here’
NY Post
Top news outlets across the US have been forced to slash their workforces at the fastest rate in three years, leaving a larger share of Americans in so-called “news deserts”.
Collectively, media companies have shed some 2,700 positions from their respective newsrooms — the most since COVID-19 ravaged payrolls in 2020, according to CNN, citing data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Most recently, The Washington Post told its already-battered workforce that 240 layoffs were impending — an announcement that triggered a 24-hour strike over what staff called management’s failure to bargain in good faith.
The DC-based paper is just one of many news outlets struggling to devise a sustainable business model in the decades since the internet upended the economics of journalism: Earlier this month, Yahoo News and Yahoo Sports announced plans to slim down its workforce by 20% — or 1,600 employees — before year’s end.
The impact has been so severe that even late Berkshire Hathaway icon Charlie Munger said, “We have suffered a huge loss here,” and called the media landscape’s shift away from traditional newspapers “a terrible thing that’s happened to our country.”
“Now about 95% of [US newspapers] are going to disappear and go away forever,” lamented Munger, who died last month at 99. “And what do we get in substitute? We get a bunch of people who attract an audience because they’re crazy.”
