McClatchy laid off at least 90 journalists Thursday across dozens of newspapers, slashing more than a third of the editorial staff at The Miami Herald and nearly eliminating the newsroom at its Spanish-language sister paper, El Nuevo Herald.
More than 30 roles were cut at The Herald, according to five people with knowledge of the layoffs.
At Pacific Northwest papers including The Bellingham Herald and The Idaho Statesman, 17 journalists — about a third of unionized workers — were let go, the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild said. The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky laid off 13 of its 23 newsroom employees.
The full scope of the cuts was not immediately clear.
Carol Marbin Miller, deputy investigations editor at The Miami Herald, called the layoffs and elimination of vacant positions “a blood bath.”
“We’re all gobsmacked by the breadth of the cuts,” she said. “I have seen multiple rounds of layoffs or buyouts. I cannot remember a day in which 30 slots were wiped off the slate.”
The chain owns The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and 28 other papers in 14 states.
Sold to hedge fund Chatham Asset Management after a 2020 bankruptcy, it has repeatedly cut staff. In late 2025 it closed its breaking-news desk and Washington bureau.
Nearly 40 percent of U.S. local newspapers have closed in the past two decades, a 2025 Northwestern University report found, leaving many communities with little or no local coverage.
A person close to the decision-making said the latest cuts were driven by business performance, not the company’s new AI tool that summarizes articles and rewrites them for different audiences. Journalists at several McClatchy papers had publicly withheld bylines from that tool earlier this year.