Hello, and welcome to The Present Age. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Before we get into the subject of today’s newsletter, let’s enjoy a little mood music: Johnny Cash’s fantastic cover of Bonnie “Prince” Billy/Will Oldham’s gorgeous “I See A Darkness”:

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And now that you’re done doing that, let’s get into today’s edition.

You’ve probably seen a bunch of headlines that paint a dire picture of what the future holds for the world of news media.

Like this, for instance:

Or… any of these:

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Unfortunately, they’re all accurate. There’s an industry-wide belt-tightening happening right now.

• CNN - “a couple hundred” staffers lost their jobs

• Gannett - “roughly 200” employees were laid off, just months after hundreds of others were laid off.

• The Washington Post - just announced the end of its Sunday magazine, laying off the 10 staffers who ran it.

• Protocol - shut down last month, laying off its entire staff.

• Vice - has been laying off employees in small-ish chunks spread out over many months, which has helped spare them bad headlines.

• ABC News - seems like they’ll be making some layoffs early in 2023.

• NBC News/MSNBC - seems like they’ll be making layoffs early next year, as well.

There’s one example, however, that made me feel like my head was going to explode.