Even large news outlets can’t avoid the economic reality that news is dying and that journalists of color likely will be hurt the most
By Justin RayJan 24, 2024 (SFChronicle.com)
As a former Los Angeles Times journalist, Tuesday was a difficult day. More than 100 employees at the newspaper were laid off in one of the biggest cuts in the paper’s history.
While much of the focus is understandably on the job losses, one of the biggest conclusions to be made from the tragedy is that even large news outlets can’t avoid the economic reality that news is dying and that journalists of color likely will be hurt the most.
The Los Angeles Times Guild, the union that represents the paper, revealed that these cuts disproportionately hit Black, Latino and Asian American employees. A joint statement from the L.A. Times Guild Black, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern North African and South Asian caucuses echoed this sentiment: “Our newspaper’s ownership made a promise to bring in talented journalists from diverse backgrounds so that our staff reflects the city we cover, in the most populous state in the country. These proposed cuts would severely damage what incremental progress has been made.”
Several journalists reported that entire desks were decimated: among them, the Times’ Washington D.C., bureau — a stunning development during an election year and on the day of the New Hampshire primary. Nick Baumann said on social media that he was hired last year as deputy bureau chief to lead the paper’s coverage of the 2024 election. He was laid off Tuesday.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s billionaire owner, stated that the cuts were necessary due to the Times’ inability to absorb annual losses of $30 million to $40 million without increasing readership for advertising and subscriptions. If true, it’s hard to imagine a way to turn those losses around that doesn’t involve a magic lamp and three wishes.
“It did not have to be this way,” the Guild wrote in regards to the layoffs. For its part, the union blamed management for the paper’s financial predicament, describing it as “a fiscal crisis of our company’s own making.” The union called the cuts “the fruit of years of middling strategy, the absence of a publisher, and no clear direction.”
That all may be true, but the reality is many, many, many other publishers are struggling too.
On Tuesday, more than 400 Condé Nast employees walked off the job, in protest of planned layoffs. Over the past year, the Washington Post, NPR, CNN and Vox Media have also had layoffs and buyouts, according to the Associated Press. The wire service also reported that, according to the employment firm Challenger, an estimated 2,681 news industry jobs were lost in 2023 through the end of November. This sum was more than the full years of 2022 and 2021.
The news industry faces assaults on many fronts. Rising income inequality may contribute to consumers eschewing news subscriptions. Many people are getting their news from social media, and those platforms have deprioritized news. Print advertising is disappearing. Behemoth news outlets like the New York Times have cannibalized subscribers from smaller outlets by becoming one-stop shops for news junkies, having amassed a sizable staff that allows the paper to cover just enough of everything.
And just think: The news industry is struggling this much to keep journalists employed, and we haven’t yet seen a wide adoption of artificial intelligence technologies in newsrooms.
All of this is bad for democracy. As more antidemocratic political candidates seek office, we’re losing the people who are at the frontlines of holding them accountable. We’re also seeing more disreputable sites presenting information to the public and misinforming the electorate.
If we lose journalism, we may lose free and fair elections.
Where journalism and journalists go from here is unclear. When I left my role at the Los Angeles Times, I ended up without a job for a year due to a paucity of open positions. It made me question the viability of the field for most. I struggled during this time to land a position in the media, while seeing plenty of openings in other healthier job markets. While I eventually did land a new position in journalism, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps it was a sign that maybe I should switch career paths.
While it seems likely that journalism will continue, increasingly it looks like only a select few will have the privilege to make a career out of it.
For journalism’s sake, I hope the Times’ union is right about blaming the paper’s issues on management. But I fear that thinking avoids a much more painful truth: that all journalists face treacherous waters. The issue may not be that you chose the wrong ship; it may be that you decided to board at all.
Justin Ray is a Los Angeles-based journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times and Columbia Journalism Review. He currently works for the independent environmental news outlet Grist.
Jan 24, 2024
By Justin Ray
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