The Value Of Truth: How To Keep News In Business

WAMU 88.5

Published February 12, 2019 at 8:06 AM MST

Members of the BuzzFeed News team at their desks in New York City According to a recent report in The New York Times, the company expects to surpass 300 million dollars in earnings for the 2018 fiscal year. But in January 2019, BuzzFeed laid off about 15 percent of its employees.

It’s been a bruising couple of months for the journalism industry.

Some estimates suggest over 2,000 journalists lost their jobs in a slew of layoffs at BuzzFeed, Vice, Gannett, The Miami Herald and HuffPost.

Many, many talented reporters and editors were let go.

The Cut broke it down:

While the companies’ reasonings behind mass layoffs aren’t identical, there is a common thread: the cuts have less to do with the talent of the workers, and more to do with financial imperatives and the whims of investors. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Nancy Dubuc, CEO at Vice, seeks to decrease spending and increase profitability. HuffPost spokesperson told CNN that the site is “investing its talents and resources to areas that have high audience engagement, differentiation and are poised for growth at a time when our mission means more than ever.” And according to BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, who reportedly suggested that employees bring dogs to work on Monday as a means of raising morale, BuzzFeed is “restructuring” to “focus in on the content that is working, and achieve the right cost structure to support our multi-revenue model.” (There is also speculation that BuzzFeed is preparing for a sale or merger.)

But employees are skeptical of these explanations, and many are laying the blame on Facebook and Google, which monopolize digital ad growth, as well as poor decisions on the management level.

At a time when there seems to be more news (and more interest in news) than ever, why is the journalism industry doing so dismally?

Show produced by Kathryn Fink.

GUESTS

Ben Smith, Editor-in-chief, BuzzFeed News; @BuzzFeedBen

Rick Edmonds, Media business analyst, the Poynter Institute; @RickEdmonds

Amanda Zamora, Chief audience officer, The Texas Tribune; @amzam

For more, visit https://the1a.org.