This winter has been marked by mass layoffs in the American media, CNN, Vox Media, The Washington Post, a trend that continues amid a gloomy economic climate, writes AFP, citing News.ro.

“I belong to a group of NBC Investigates (NBC) layoffs. I’m going to miss it, but I’m grateful for the time I had here.” Like Emily Siegel, who did not elaborate in this message posted on Twitter, several reporters from NBC, MSNBC or CNN announced on social media that they were fired in December.

On Friday, employees at Vox Media, owner of Vox, The Verge, SBNation and, since 2019, the prestigious New York Magazine, received the same email from their boss, Jim Bankoff, in which he announced the “difficult decision to cut approximately 7% of our personnel in all departments”, “due to the difficult economic situation”.

According to that email, the affected employees, about 130 of the 1,900, were notified by a second message “within 15 minutes.”

A few have taken to social media to express their anger or concern, like Megan McCarron, a journalist of “nine and a half years” at Eater who was fired at “37 weeks” pregnant. Vox Media responded to AFP that the group had offered “severance payments”, including additional weeks of compensation for future parental leave.

Newsroom employment has been declining for years in the US

If the layoffs do not yet have the effect of the social plans of large groups such as Google (cancellation of 12,000 jobs), then the American press is also affected by “declining advertising revenues and the economic slowdown,” Chris Roush, professor of journalism and dean of the School of Communication, explained to AFP Quinnipiac University (Connecticut).

“Many of them have grown and developed in hopes of growing their audience to a certain level. This has not happened and is unlikely to happen, given the economic context,” he adds.

According to a 2021 study by the Pew Research Center, the number of newsroom journalists in the United States fell from 114,000 to 85,000 between 2008 and 2020.

“Journalism has been under pressure for a long time, and many companies seem to think it’s time to cut costs at the expense of labor,” lamented the Writers Guild of America East, which controls the unions at NBC and MSNBC. The two media outlets, which did not respond to AFP’s request, have fired 75 employees, according to US media.

Smaller companies will have more problems. “They are not as established as a media brand”

And it could follow an announcement from The Washington Post, where editor Fred Ryan warned in mid-December that job cuts would take place in the first quarter of 2023, representing a “single-digit percentage” of 2,500 employees.

The editors of the daily, bought in 2013 by Jeff Bezos, announced in December the closure of the Sunday supplement of the magazine, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in 2008 and 2010.

According to American media reports, the total number of layoffs at CNN in December reached several hundred employees (out of more than 4,000), data not confirmed by the group. It comes as part of a reorganization following the merger between WarnerMedia (CNN, HBO Max) and Discovery, which created media and streaming giant Warner Bros. Discovery.

Due to strategic upheaval, the group pulled the plug on its paid streaming service CNN+ in April, just a month after its launch.

With viewership and pay-TV subscribers declining for years, and competition from platforms like Netflix, “these companies are in a constant battle to survive,” said Naveen Sarma, director of U.S. media and telecommunications at S&P Global Ratings.

For Chris Roush, CNN or The Washington Post, “they won’t go away, but a smaller company will have more problems because it’s smaller and not as well-known as a media brand,” he explains. In particular, he refers to Buzzfeed, which laid off 12% of its staff in December, or Vice Media, whose CEO Nancy Dabuc told employees on Friday that she was considering selling the group.