Postwas laying off roughly 20 people in its Washington bureau; there was no immediate comment from arepresentative. Pitchfork announced it was no longer a freestanding music site, after digital publications BuzzFeed News and Jezebel disappeared last year.
Not so the news industry. Seeing all the damage is what led to the Washington-based National Press Club to open its weekly Taco Night to laid-off colleagues and offer a one-month free membership to people who need a networking opportunity. The nation loses 2.5 newspapers per week—a pace that is accelerating, the study found. Through the end of November, the employment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas estimated 2,681 journalism jobs were lost in 2023, and that tally has increased by hundreds since.
Publishers have also complained of losing significant business with Facebook much less frequently featuring news articles that bring people to news sites. Twitter, now X, was once like a second home to journalists, but that’s become much less the case since Elon Musk’s purchase of the site. “It was business malpractice and human cruelty at an epic scale,” Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Axios and Politico, told the Puck newsletter. “Anyone who knew anything about the economics of media knew it would die quickly, spectacularly and sadly.”
Steve Reilly, an investigative reporter at The Messenger who saw his job disappear this week, wrote: “If you’ve been affected by recent journalism layoffs at the Messenger or elsewhere, please know that it is not your fault. It has nothing to do with you or your work.”