New year offering few good tidings
On Friday, the National Press Club is offering solace — and a free meal — by giving recently laid-off journalists tacos in recognition of a brutal stretch that seems to offer bad news daily for an already struggling industry.
For anyone who works in the news media, the list is intimidating — and unremitting.
The news website The Messenger folded on Wednesday after being in operation since only last May, abruptly putting some 300 journalists out of work. The Los Angeles Times laid off more than 100 journalists in recent weeks, Business Insider and Time magazine announced staff cuts, Sports Illustrated is struggling to survive, the Washington Post is completing buyouts to more than 200 staffers. The Post reported Thursday that The Wall Street Journal was laying off roughly 20 people in its Washington bureau; there was no immediate comment from a Journal representative. Pitchfork announced it was no longer a freestanding music site, after digital publications Buzzfeed News and Jezebel disappeared last year. And journalists at the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, New York Daily News and the Conde Nast magazine company have all conducted walkouts to protest how management was dealing with business problems.
All this is taking place as the overall jobs outlook in the nation gets stronger. U.S. employers began 2024 by adding 353,000 jobs in January — a striking spate of hiring. A government report Friday showed that last month’s job gain — roughly twice what economists predicted — topped the December gain of 333,000.
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.
“It’s very important when people have lost their jobs to know that they have some support behind them,” said Didier Saugy, the club’s executive director.
This is not a new issue
The news business has been in a free fall for the past two decades, starting when much of its advertising moved online to opportunistic tech companies. Advertising is still a huge part of the problem, although there are more complex reasons and circumstances unique to individual outlets that also play a part.