This reporting is featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
Seasons greetings! And by “season,” we mean that surreal time of year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day when media giants scramble to clear their books and pink-slip a bunch of employees.
As 2023 nears its end, the media grinches are about to steal Christmas for many, as several key outlets are poised to suffer through a final wave of layoffs.
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The bloodbath began Thursday at Condé Nast, where about a dozen New Yorker staffers exited the famed magazine. Among the exits, Confider has confirmed: Andy Borowitz, the notoriously unfunny humorist whose fake-news sendups once accounted for mondo traffic; staff writers Sue Halpern and Carolyn Kormann; culture editor Michael Agger; three video staffers; four copy desk employees; a social-media specialist; and one interactive designer.
Separately, investigative reporter Katherine Boo, who won a Pulitzer for WaPo with her exposé of abuse in D.C. group homes for the intellectually disabled, has stepped down from The New Yorker, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Over at sister publication Vanity Fair, the planned cuts first reported by Confider are currently on hold while the union and Condé bargain over a new contract. Meanwhile, out west on Friday, the Los Angeles Times eliminated nine positions from its video journalism studio.
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“We are fortunate that our ownership has and will continue to invest in the Los Angeles Times,” Executive Editor Kevin Merida wrote to the newsroom in an email obtained and reviewed by Confider. “This is part of the ongoing restructuring of our Studio operation which was made more urgent by financial realities.” Merida told staff that LA Times Studios remains a priority for the paper, as it’s a key tool for turning its IP into film and streaming projects. Several such productions are already “in progress,” he added.
Elsewhere in media cuts, The Messenger, aka media tycoon Jimmy Finkelstein’s quixotic quest to recreate the glory days of so-called “objective” media via a “WaPo-Daily Mail hybrid,” is already looking down the barrel of potential layoffs. The site launched in May with 150 journalists and pie-in-the-sky promises to get that number up to 550 total, but has faced financial issues this fall.
According to people familiar with the matter, Messenger management is conducting a review of the site’s content to see what isn’t working in order to assess steps for a “strategic realignment,” which could mean layoffs before the end of the year. “The site is always under review as we look to grow and roll out new initiatives,” a rep for The Messenger emailed Confider.
In similarly murky waters is The Washington Post, which, as we reported last week, has raised the spectre of steep cuts should the paper not meet its goal for 240 voluntary buyouts “to help restore The Post’s financial health.” Reps for The New Yorker and Condé Nast declined to comment. Merida did not respond to a request for comment.
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