News Media Woes Lead To Layoffs

Vice Media told employees Friday it is cutting 10% of its workforce, or 250 jobs, the latest in a string of significant cutbacks in the sector. according to The Wall Street Journal.  Last week, BuzzFeed said it, too, was cutting around 250 jobs, or 15% of its workforce, as it tries to get on a path to profitability. Verizon Media Group’s HuffPost and Yahoo News units also suffered deep cuts, as did lifestyle-focused Refinery29.

Also,Craig Forman, CEO of McClatchy Company, Friday emailed all staff to say 459 or about 10 percent of the newspaper chain's employees would be offered voluntary buyouts. According to the Miami High Times, Forman stressed the buyout is optional. "It is important to us that [employees] are empowered to make the next steps on their career path," he writes, and also references, "driving our company to a functionally based organizational structure in targeted strategic areas."

McClatchy publishes newspapers across the nation, including the Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Idaho Statesman, Fresno Bee, and Charlotte Observer. Last August, the company cut about 3.5 percent of the staff, nearly 140 employees.

Each company has its own distinct factors contributing to its problems, but the common threads are the increasingly difficult online-advertising market and pressures from investors whose influx of money came with expectations of red-hot returns.

Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and a rising player, Amazon.com Inc., attracted an estimated 62% of online-ad spending in 2018, according to research firm eMarketer. That leaves several dozen significant players—including all online publishers and traditional media companies—competing for the remaining pot of money.

WSJ reports a wave of consolidation in the industry might be the only way forward, many executives in the industry say. BuzzFeed, whose biggest investor is Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, has had some preliminary discussions with Group Nine Media, a Discovery Inc. -backed outfit whose outlets include video-news specialist NowThis and animal-themed The Dodo, according to people familiar with the situation, though the discussions haven’t advanced very far.