Journalists across the U.S. have fallen victim to mass layoffs tearing through the digital media industry. Photo Courtesy of Pexels.
By Gabriel Gomez Art Director
The past few months have been tough for journalists across several publications all over the nation. The industry-wide layoffs have left thousands of media workers without jobs. This seems like a harrowing time to be in digital media. With the many job losses journalism is seeing, the future seems to be pretty
bleak.
With big companies across the board letting go of staff writers and employees, job security and morale could be at an all-time low. Journalism hasn’t been the only industry that has seen mass layoffs and furloughs with tech being hit hard as well, this still doesn’t bode well for employees who are just scraping by to deliver quality work with little guarantees of a job this year or next.
Insider Inc. announced on April 20 that it would begin cutting an estimated 10% of its staff. At Buzzfeed News, 100% of the online publication’s staff will be out of work. In a memo obtained by the New York Times, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti told the company’s news workforce that the online publication would be shut down. The company will be shifting toward concentrating on its other outlet, HuffPost.
After years of financial hardship, Vice Media announced on April 27 that it would lay off more than 100
employees and shut down its Vice World News brand. This is a loss for journalists at Vice who have pioneered over the years in bringing hard-hitting stories that deliver insight into domestic and foreign
affairs.
Vice employees who were recently laid off are incredibly devastated, but thankful for their time at the company and slightly hopeful for the future.
Elizabeth Landers, who was a chief political correspondent for Vice News wrote on Twitter, “I hope our
work has been impactful and illuminating.”
Rachel Cheung of Vice World News tweeted, “I’ve been laid off along with the rest of the crew in Asia Pacific. But I’m so proud of what we accomplished in such a short period, the stories we told and the issues we looked into.”
Though many journalists have been laid off in the past few weeks, a lot are still looking forward to making an impact as freelancers and trying to maintain the narrative that people are valuable as writers and can’t be replaced by AI systems like ChatGPT. Only time will tell just how far these layoffs will go.
