Free Republic

The start of 2019 has been brutal to the media industry, with as many as 2,100 writers, editors, and other workers losing their jobs in the past two weeks. On February 1, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Vice Media would be laying off 10 percent of its staff, or approximately 250 workers, as part of a reorganization effort; just hours later, the Miami New Times reported that McClatchy, which operates newspapers across the country, had offered voluntary buyouts to 450 workers. These reports come just one week after Verizon (which owns HuffPost, Yahoo, and AOL) laid off 7 percent of...

France's leading opposition politician says President Emmanuel Macron is ultimately responsible for the Yellow Vests protests and any violent incidents surrounding them. National Rally leader Marine Le Pen told BFM-TV Sunday that new elections for the National Assembly and the Citizen Initiative Referendum are needed.... A Syrian army artillery position attacked in an air strike by the US-led coalition late Saturday night followed by an ISIS ground attack..... President Trump says the US military is "slowly" withdrawing from Syria...... If there's an invasion of Venezuela as some say is coming it looks like the first wave is humanitarian relief.... Today...

Dozens of jobs were slashed at HuffPost that day, following a round of layoffs at Gannett Media; further jobs were about to be disappeared at BuzzFeed. It was a grim day for the media, and I just wanted to channel my tiny part of the prevailing gloom. Then the responses started rolling in—some sympathy from fellow journalists and readers, then an irritating gush of near-identical responses: “Learn to code.” “Maybe learn to code?” “BETTER LEARN TO CODE THEN.” “Learn to code you useless bitch.” Alongside these tweets were others: “Stop writing fake news and crap.” “MAGA.” “Your opinions suck and...

"We are changing the size of the workforce to align with the revenue," says Jeanne Segal, McClatchy's director of public relations and communications.

After news came out about mass layoffs at HuffPost, Buzzfeed and Gannett -- in the midst of the media's relentless smear-job against the Covington Catholic students -- right-wing Twitter had a field day. Tons of leftist journalists announced they were laid off on Twitter and the top meme was telling them to "learn to code" -- which is the same advice the media gave middle Americans whose jobs are being taken in traditional industries. Talia Levin, who was hired by Media Matters last year after being fired by the New Yorker for smearing an ICE agent as a Nazi because...