Over 500 journalists were laid off in January 2024 alone

Over 500 journalists were laid off from news outlets in January, according to a new report released Thursday, as many organizations continue to struggle financially.

The layoffs reflect the grim state of the news business. In January alone, the industry — including print, broadcast and digital media — saw 538 announced layoffs, according to the report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The job cuts come after an already bleak year. The news industry shed 3,087 digital, broadcast and print news jobs in 2023 — the highest annual total since 2020, when 16,060 cuts were recorded.

In the last month, dozens of layoffs were announced at outlets including NBC News, Time magazine, Business Insider and The Los Angeles Times — the last of which saw more than 100 employees cut. Pitchfork is also facing layoffs as it’s being folded into men's magazine GQ, and Sports Illustrated is shedding a "significant reduction" of its 100-member workforce. Staffers at Condé Nast walked off the job over the company’s plan to lay off staff.

And, less than a year after it launched, The Messenger shut down "effective immediately" on Wednesday, leaving its journalists without a job. (Numbers from The Messenger's layoffs were not included in the 538 job cuts reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.)

Throughout the month, journalists' timelines on X, formerly known as Twitter, were filled with posts from fellow journalists who had been laid off by their employers and were unsure of what their next job would be.

Tim Franklin, senior associate dean at Northwestern’s Medill journalism school called the January layoffs “breathtaking.”

“This is a continuation of the trend of what's happening throughout last year,” Franklin told POLITICO. “Also, layoffs tend to happen either at the end of the year or the beginning of the year just because a lot of news companies are trying to lay a foundation for the upcoming year.”

But Gabriel Kahn, a professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said layoffs can and do occur throughout the whole year in large numbers.

The LA Times cut more than 70 positions in June and The Washington Post eliminated 240 jobs through a voluntary separation package in October.

“We saw a concentration of announcements, but I don't think it's a different story than what we've been seeing for more than a decade now,” Khan said. “The only business plan seems to be to cut and only a few places have really been able to build on something new and different.”

The layoffs also come during an election year, triggering worry over how outlets can sustain robust political coverage. The LA Times cuts are “gutting our Washington bureau in an election year,” union Chair Brian Contreras said in a statement.

“What concerns me is with all of these losses and this loss of coverage is that it's only going to fuel more misinformation and disinformation into communities,” Franklin said. “How do you then combat that challenge?”

The eliminations at the LA Times will have “devastating” implications for the publication’s journalists of color if the layoffs go as expected, according to the newsroom’s Latino, Black, Asian American Pacific Islander and Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian caucuses.

The Latino caucus would lose 38 percent of its members, the Black caucus would lose 36 percent of its members, and the AAPI and MENASA caucuses would lose 34 percent of their combined membership, according to a statement.

“A lot of the diverse staff members who've been hired in recent years have borne the brunt of these recent rounds of layoffs,” Franklin said. “And news organizations need more diverse coverage, they need to engage with diverse audiences. This could inhibit their ability to do that, which I think is also a big concern.”

While there is no silver bullet solution to transform the business model across the journalism industry to prevent layoffs, Franklin pointed to many news organizations that have local ownership or reader-revenue-based models that have seen some success, such as The Boston Globe, The Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Seattle Times.

“Part of the issue is that the landscape is changing so rapidly, that the news organizations are trying to change the wheels on the plane as it's flying, which is also a challenge,” Franklin said.

Christine Zhu contributed to this report.