Opinion | Wall Street Strikes Again With Mass Media Layoffs – Be Les Leopold (Common Dreams) / Jan 31, 2024
There is one real solution to creating a modicum of job stability: Taming Wall Street’s greed.
Mass layoffs are ripping through the news industry. More than 20,000 media jobs were cut in 2023 with many more on the chopping block. Just this past week, the Los Angeles Times announced the layoffs of 20% of its newsroom employees.
- Time Magazine said it will terminate 15% of its unionized editorial staff.
- Sports Illustratedlaid off most of its staff.
- Business Insider cut 8% of its staff and Forbes another 3%.
- The unionized staff at Conde Nast (publisher of Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, Bon Appetit, Glamour, Architectural Digest, The New Yorker, and Teen Vogue) walked out to protest looming layoffs, while chanting, “Bosses wear Prada, workers get nada!”
And private equity and hedge funds like Alden Global Capital are buying up newspapers and gutting staffs, again and again.
The reason is obvious, right? Social media is eating into newspaper revenues. Advertisers have discovered that you can reach more people and sell more products by paying influencers and running ads on social media, Amazon, and Google. And many people prefer to get their news for free from their algorithm-informed social media feeds, rather than from the traditional press. At first glance it appears these mass layoffs of journalists might be nothing more than the pain and suffering that goes with technological progress, just like the obsolescence of elevator operators or turnpike toll collectors.
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