NPR affiliate WAMU announced on Friday that it would shutter local news site DCist, which it had acquired in 2018. The call came from station manager Erika Pulley-Hayes, who in about 10 minutes told all staff employees that WAMU would slash DCist’s newsroom as part of a strategy change to focus primarily on audio journalism. She took no questions. DCist joins the ever-extending list of digital media outlets shuttered in just the first two months of 2024, its announcement landing the day after Vice’s mass layoff. CBS News and the Wall Street Journal made significant cuts in early February, and Business Insider, the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated, and Pitchfork all faced major layoffs in January. The Messenger CEO Jimmy Finkelstein axed hundreds of employees without severance pay when he shuttered the site last month, callously calling their GoFundMe “wonderful.”
