Hold On To Your Butts, News Media Industry

Prepare for "a dark winter."

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”:

---

Now that we’ve done that, make sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter by putting your email address in this little box:

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:

The Washington Post: “CNN makes massive staff cuts as news industry prepares for a dark winter”

Or… any of these:

Vanity Fair: “Layoffs and Hiring Freezes: Media Industry Ends 2022 with Bad News for Journalists”

Axios: “Media layoffs spike amid recession fears”

The New York Times: “Gannett Starts Another Round of Staff Cuts”

---

---

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.