Free Republic

TV industry executives out of work, describe their struggles. (My description)

Vice Media announced in a memo this week that it will be laying off hundreds of employees as it faces a sale. Vice Media CEO Bruce Dixon said in the company-wide email that the decision to lay off “several hundred” staff members did not come lightly. “This decision was not made lightly,” Dixon wrote. Dixon added that fired staffers will be notified of the next steps next week.

The Los Angeles Times announced over 100 journalists would be laid off Tuesday as the media outlet lost as much as $40 million a year, according to multiple outlets. The newspaper will reduce its newsroom staff by 20%, one of the biggest cuts in its 142-year history, the outlet’s Meg James reported. Among those who were axed included the chief and deputy chief of the paper’s Washington, D.C., bureau, along with its business editor, the music editor and books editor. Two of the paper’s four managing editors resigned prior to the announcement of the layoffs, adding to the uncertainty around...

American coal is rebounding! Yay. Enough of Unicorn Farts.

Forget the conventional wisdom about firing irreplaceable employees. Because if your employees aren’t irreplaceable, you’re doing something wrong. Credit: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock“The graveyards,” General De Gaulle once ironically observed, “are full of indispensable men.” Maybe so, but the same may not be so easily said about organizations whose success did depend on irreplaceable managers and staff.Take, for example, Apple. Under Steve Jobs it created the iPod, iPhone, App Store, and iPad — products and services that ranged from radical departures to entirely new concepts.Under Tim Cook? What his Apple has introduced to the marketplace are copycat items: A streaming service,...

During the period when social media was increasingly putting pressure on legacy media outlets, driving down their profits, a phrase crept into the national lexicon. “Learn to code.” While it was no doubt said in a derisive or at least humorous fashion by most, it carried an underlying assumption that most people accepted. Perhaps you should learn to code. That’s where the jobs of the future would be. But the period when that will be true may turn out to have a much shorter lifespan than anticipated. The rise of Artificial Intelligence and chatbot apps is already automating the work...

Adults who received the updated coronavirus booster shots are better protected against severe disease than those who haven’t, cutting their risk of having to visit an emergency room or being hospitalized with covid-19 by 50 percent or more, according to new federal data.Two reports released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention give the first detailed look at how well the updated boosters from Pfizer and Moderna protect against serious illness. But uptake of the “bivalent” boosters rolled out in September has been low among vaccine-weary Americans, with only about 14 percent of those eligible — ages 5...

CNN boss Chris Licht has gutted sister network HLN, terminating all live programming as part of ongoing layoffs and budget cuts. Licht slashed HLN’s “Morning Express with Robin Meade,” as well as “Weekend Express,” he announced in a memo to CNN’s remaining staff on Thursday. Meade and HLN’s live news programming staffers will be among those fired. Also getting their pink slips Thursday were prominent CNN correspondents Alison Kosik, Martin Savidge, Alex Field, Mary Ann Fox and Chris Cillizza, according to Variety. CNN declined to comment on the overall number of job cuts when reached by The Post. Licht is...

Twitter began its highly anticipated mass layoffs Thursday evening by eliminating its top internal critics. Twitter’s Ethical AI team, according to former staff, is no more. Multiple members of Twitter’s Machine Learning, Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (META) team, including its former leader, posted on Twitter saying they were no longer at the company. At least one of the former workers suggested the entire team was being disbanded. The apparent layoffs impacting the company’s strongest internal watchdog group comes as thousands more brace for cuts potentially impacting around half of the company’s staff according to previous reports. Gizmodo found tweets from...

Ellie Smith @elliekaysmith PSA if you’re going to tweet something snarky about CNN+, hundreds of journalists and technicians who did nothing but work their tails off just had the rug pulled out from under them. So be kind. Kristi Noem @KristiNoem Now you know how the Keystone XL Pipeline workers feel.

The news business is in a state of flux. Newsroom employment has dropped by about 26% since 2008 and while many new digital outlets are adding jobs, others are struggling to survive. Journalists who have left traditional newsrooms for roles outside the industry — or for positions that defy easy categorization — are offering advice on LinkedIn to reporters and editors who might want to make the same jump. Question to journalists who have left newsrooms: What's the best advice you'd give to a reporter/editor leaving the traditional world of journalism (whether they're leaving industry altogether or moving to something...

NEW YORK, NY—When Huffington Post writer Brutto Chalet discovered he was being let go earlier this year, he decided he was going to do what all Americans do when they lose their job: learn to code. There's just one problem: he suddenly realized the code he was working in was binary. "Excuse me, professor?" he said to his programming teacher. "Yeah, hi. Brutto Chalet, he/him. Did I hear you correctly? Are we only allowed to work in binary code? Are there non-binary options for us to work with?" The teacher said that they would just be learning to program atop...

John F. Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said only months ago that those losing fossil fuel jobs in coal and hydraulic fracturing will find they have a better choice of jobs either in the solar industry or as wind turbine technicians. That was then. Now, a wind blade manufacturing plant located in Aberdeen, South Dakota, has announced it is shutting its doors permanently in less than two months. The disappearance of Molded Fiber Glass will displace over 300 workers and their families. It marks another major loss of energy jobs in the state following President Joe Biden's halting...

ROARING SPRING, PA. — When the Appvion Inc. paper mill plant shuts its doors for good in two weeks, putting 293 people out of work, it will mark the first significant manufacturing loss in this state since President Biden took office. “We were all completely blindsided,” said state Sen. Judy Ward, who claims she and other local officials had no hint that the plant, founded in 1866, was in danger of shuttering. Mitchell Becker, president of the local branch of United Steelworkers, the union that endorsed Biden for president, said he thought his job — which he’s kept for 25...

BuzzFeed acquired HuffPost from Verizon Media in February. BuzzFeed announced layoffs for the HuffPost newsroom on Tuesday, three weeks after acquiring HuffPost from Verizon Media in February. Hillary Frey, the site’sexecutive editor, and Louise Roug, the executive editor for international, will be departing in the restructuring effort. HuffPost Canada will also shutter operations later this month. A deal between BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Verizon Media was first made public in November. Verizon Media stated at the time that BuzzFeed and HuffPost would operate as “separate, distinct news organizations” with their own websites and editorial staff while BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti led...

"After 10 years (!!) I have been laid off along with many of my talented colleagues. I’m very proud of the work I did here and will share some in the coming days. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a curious, motivated narrative reporter with a keen eye for news, keep me in mind."

One of the most chilling examples in modern times of the accelerating full-spectrum assault on free speech and the First Amendment took place yesterday. One of the most chilling examples in modern times of the accelerating full-spectrum assault on free speech and the First Amendment took place yesterday on Capitol Hill, courtesy of a subcommittee of the Democrat-controlled House Committee on Energy and Commerce. For over three hours on Wednesday afternoon, the subcommittee held a virtual hearing titled Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media. The target was conservative media in general and Fox News in particular. Conservatives...

Bloomberg News on Thursday began notifying a group of employees they were being terminated, according to three people familiar with the matter, the latest in an ongoing string of layoffs at media companies as they grapple with the economics of the digital age. Some staffers were given the sense the company hoped to enact a restructuring among a group of veteran editors, according to one of these people, who noted that some employees affected had been with Bloomberg for decades. Some employees at Bloomberg were of the belief, this person said, that the company was hoping to open its ranks...

John Micklethwait, the top editor of Bloomberg News, blasted the rank and file for spotty performance over the past year as he unveiled cuts of approximately 90 people in the editorial and research departments. ... We all know that we also ‘lost’ stories because we moved too slowly,” he continued. “Teams waited for somebody to back-read a piece or ignored the requests from the News Desk to get a blast out quickly. Managers spent too much time setting up conference calls when they should just have been writing. Or teams suddenly delivered enterprise pieces that nobody wanted. “Covid has highlighted...

Noem has also built national steam with her handling of the coronavirus pandemic—a mirrored, hands-off approach to the former president’s—refusing to implement a statewide mask mandate to mitigate the disease’s spread. The popularity has sparked calls for Noem to pursue a higher office.