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Among the big (though perhaps not as notable) news of the week: it was my birthday! It’s the first one I’ve celebrated while getting to work for The Objective part-time. I’d love if you could help me extend the celebration by becoming a member and supporting our newsroom’s work.
In this issue:
🪓 Underrepresented journalists most impacted by recent job cuts per new report
And also: Press Forward announces its first round of grantees, the New York Times defends health professionals’ accounts of devastation in Gaza, The Beacon closes its Wichita newsroom, Vice attempts to bring back the gaming vertical it once shuttered, and the New Yorker Union settles a tentative agreement with management.
—James Salanga
GENDER & SEXUALITY, RACE, & LABOR
Underrepresented journalists most impacted by layoffs, says new report
Layoffs in journalism since 2022 have disproportionately impacted people of marginalized genders and people of color, according to a new report from the Institute of Independent Journalists (IIJ). It collects data from a survey with 176 journalist respondents who had undergone a layoff or buyout since 2022. Among the findings:
42% of respondents are people of color, and were proportionally overrepresented in the survey compared to the industry at large (17% of the industry is journalists of color, per Pew Research Center survey data).
73% of respondents are a marginalized gender (68% were women, 5% nonbinary), and were similarly overrepresented in the survey (women comprise 46% of the journalism industry).
70% of respondents were between 26 and 45.
52% of respondents had been in their job for less than 3 years.
Founded in 2022 to support freelance journalists of color, the IIJ says it “undertook this project to shine light on the populations most impacted by news layoffs.” The data in the report was collected from December 2023 to September 2024.
IIJ founder Katherine Reynolds Lewis added that the foundation’s report aims to “capture the human cost of layoffs on journalists, as well as the impact on newsroom talent.” The number of journalism job cuts by this September (3,402) already surpasses the total number of layoffs in all of last year (3,087), according to outplacement firm Challenger, Grey & Christmas — and the report comes after layoffs announced this month at Resolve Philly and ABC News.
With scarce information on demographics and experience of laid-off journalists, the survey is also one effort to fill the data gap created by the collapse of the News Leaders Association’s (NLA) annual diversity census, with 2019 the last year for which data is available. NLA dissolved this year, and the diversity census saw newsroom participation routinely decline even while active.
The IIJ Foundation survey also adds more context to the picture created by the 2020 Leavers survey of journalists of color conducted by Carla Murphy and published by the Online News Association. The most common “Leaver”, among other demographics, was between 27-44 when they quit journalism — an age range that fits 70% of the layoff-affected IIJ survey respondents.
Forty-year-old respondent María Inés Zamudio, a Chicago-based investigative journalist, lost her job in the Center for Public Integrity’s mass layoff in May. She’s worked as a journalist since 2007, but told Lewis that the layoff has made her realize “the extra hours of work and strategy that went into publishing investigations that changed people’s lives doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to job stability.”
“I just don’t know if I’ll survive in this industry,” Zamudio said.
The full report can be read on the IIJ website. The foundation, which has been tracking layoff announcements since last January, is still accepting accounts from journalists who experienced layoffs or buyouts at [email protected] or through its survey Google form.
—James Salanga
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WHAT ELSE?
A bit more media
Press Forward announces first round of local news grantees: Over 200 local news outlets will get roughly $100,000 each, including eight college newsrooms and at least one newsroom in every state. The initiative, supported by more than 20 philanthropic foundations, will open applications for the next round of grants, for local news infrastructure, in mid-November.
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New York Times defends publishing 65 health professionals’ testimonies about what they saw in Gaza: The health professionals provided over 160 photos and videos to corroborate their accounts, which were independently reviewed, but the Times still faced reader pushback about accuracy and the authenticity of the three X-rays showing bullets in children’s’ heads. The Times’ Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury said the paper stands behind the essay and put it through rigorous fact-checking.
⎯
The Beacon shuts down its three-year-old Wichita newsroom: The Midwestern U.S. news nonprofit says its vision hasn’t changed, but “realized that we can’t do it all.” The news comes shortly after Sophie Culpepper published an extensively reported Nieman Lab story about disagreements around the Wichita newsroom’s goals and mission.
⎯
After laying off hundreds of employees this year, VICE is trying to pivot to gaming (again): Vice’s old gaming vertical, Waypoint, has articles on its site again — but with a different tone and aim from its original coverage. It’s all part of VICE’s resurrection post-laying off hundreds of employees thanks to new funding received from venture capital. Aftermath’s Riley McLeod argues readers won’t fall over themselves to embrace VICE’s attempt to reanimate something it already deemed killable — especially because former Waypoint workers already started their own independent outlet: Remap Radio.
⎯
New Yorker Union settles tentative agreement to avert strike: The agreement between management and union leadership comes just 11 days before the New Yorker Festival. Their second contract includes: a $63,000 salary floor set to increase to $64,500 in April 2026, a longer notice period (or more notice pay) before layoffs, and 14 weeks of paid parental leave starting January 2025. The union will schedule a ratification vote in coming weeks.
JOURNALISM IN A GRAF
Quote of the week
“The deeply partisan divide on immigration—one that frames Democrats as the party of open borders and Republicans as the nation’s hard line of defense against the invasion, swarm, influx, [insert your preferred racist language here] of migrants at the border—isn’t merely the creation of pundits and politicos. This rhetoric is also a media fabrication, solidified over decades of irresponsible coverage.”
FINALLY…
A few more resources
Looking for a job? Here are a few places to look: INN | ONA | JournalismJobs.com | 10 Jobs and a Dog | NABJ | AAJA | NAHJ | NLGJA | Trans Journalists Association | West Coast Media Jobs | @WritersofColor | MEO Jobs | Freelance Journalist Rates | Source Jobs | Opportunities of the Week ($)
How about a style guide? Trans Journalists Association | Diversity Style Guide | Tribal Nations Media Guide | NABJ Style Guide | Disability Language Style Guide | AAJA Style Guide | NAHJ Cultural Competence Handbook | SPJ Race & Gender Hotline | AMEJA Media Resource Guide | The Press in Prison | The Conscious Style Guide | Reporting on Addiction | Religion and Spirituality (Language, Please)
Thanks for reading. We appreciate you being here, and we’ll have more for you soon.
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