New York Public Radio Lays Off 14 Staffers

New York Public Radio has eliminated 14 positions, citing financial challenges including weak sponsorship income and the need to stem a mounting deficit.  

Current.org reports CEO Goli Sheikholeslami announced the cuts in a memo to staff Friday. Sheikholeslami said in the memo that “preliminary work on the FY22 budget shows we are entering the next fiscal year with a sizable deficit. And we cannot achieve our goals and meet our commitments while shouldering a fourth year of losses.” She added that NYPR entered the pandemic with a deficit.

Four of the employees affected were in news, with the rest in other departments, Sheikholeslami wrote. She did not disclose which staffers. 

“These decisions were not made lightly or with haste,” she wrote. “We have done everything we can to avoid taking these steps.”

In addition to the layoffs, the organization is cutting merit raises for its senior leadership team and staffers making more than $100,000 and halving its retirement match for a six-month period.

The cuts will shave $3 million from the station’s deficit, Sheikholeslami said. NYPR had an operating deficit of about $6.9 million in FY2019, the most recent year with available tax records. It borrowed $10 million from Boston Private Bank & Trust Company in July, according to its most recent audited financial statement. 

NYPR’s financial losses were due in part to a 27% decline in sponsorship revenue during the pandemic. “We knew sponsorship revenue would take a hit, but we planned for the advertising market to begin rebounding in the second half of this fiscal year,” Sheikholeslami wrote. “That didn’t happen, and recapturing the lost revenue will not happen in one fiscal year.”

The station’s membership income had “an impressive year” Sheikholeslami wrote, but she believes that it was bolstered by news events such as the pandemic and the election. “We cannot plan on sustaining the same level of membership revenues in a non-election, non-pandemic year,” she wrote.

The station received nearly $9 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans to assist with revenue shortfalls due to the pandemic, one of the largest amounts in public media. Sheikholeslami wrote that the budget assumes the loan will be forgiven. 

Employees who were laid off include newsroom leaders such as Richard Yeh, supervising senior producer of WNYC News and a 14-year veteran of the organization. Yeh oversaw the daily broadcast of All Things Considered and directed the newsroom’s internship program.

Others who were laid off include Gothamist editor-in-chief John Del Signore; Greene Space assistant production manager Allie Pinel; and Gothamist reporter and editor Christopher Robbins, who was also a SAG-AFTRA shop steward.