Corporate media is on life support. Driven to cut costs by sagging ad revenues and waning appetite for propaganda, layoffs and ‘restructurings’ are happening all over.
Earlier this week the LA Times laid off 120 employees, around 20% of its newsroom.
Meanwhile, BuzzFeed and Vice Media – two former darlings of digital media, are looking to siphon off assets. BuzzFeed, which has lost over 97% of its value since going public in 2021, is looking to sell its food sites, Tasty and WeFeast. While Fortress Investment Group, which took over Vice in bankruptcy last year, is looking to sell its Refinery29 women’s lifestyle site, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Fortress is in talks to sell Refinery29 after a failed attempt to find a buyer for Vice in its entirety, which includes its namesake news brand, production studio and creative agency, among other assets. Fortress is in discussions with prospective bidders for Refinery29, which saw a decrease in revenue to $30 million last year from around $50 million in 2022, according to people familiar with the matter.
Vice notably bought Refinery29 for $400 million in 2019, while Tasty was an attempt by BuzzFeed to generate revenue streams beyond advertising with direct sales of kitchenware.
The outlets join Jezebel (“Sex. Celebrity. Politics. With Teeth”), which was shuttered in November by G/O Media amid corporate layoffs, and Business Insider, which is now cutting 8% of its staff, per Semafor.
Time Magazine also laid off 30 people this week.
In 2023, there were over 30,000 workers laid off by media companies.
This is the largest number of cuts in employment since 2020 when Covid-19 was raging and over 30,000 workers were laid off.
The figure is also six times higher than the number of job losses in 2022 when several large media companies including Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney and others had undergone a series of layoffs impacting thousands of media workers. -Forbes
Taylor, Taylor, Taylor
Opining on the sad state of journalism is Jeff Bezos’s vocal-fry champion,Taylor Lorenz, who said this week that “The entire journalism industry is basically in a free-fall,” and that the LA Times’ woes follow “months and months of layoffs in the media industry.”
“And it’s not just digital media sites,” she continues. “Local news has been obliterated, the newspaper industry is cratering, radio is essentially dead – aside from NPR which has been gutted. Meanwhile, hundreds of workers at Conde Nast, the parent company of pretty much every major magazine from GQ to Vogue to the New Yorker to Vanity Fair are on strike.”
More on Taylor
Despite her claims that she is a grassroots reporter that worked her way up from independent media into the halls of establishment journalism, Taylor Lorenz represents the quintessential media spin doctor. She is notorious for her consistent and often ludicrous defense of the Biden Administration, as well as her constant attacks on the alternative media; specifically on conservative YouTubers and social media accounts like Libs of TikTok.
She became somewhat famous after her exposé on Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik in what many argued was an attempt to dox and intimidate a person critical of woke activists (the initial story published by Lorenz contained a link to the woman’s work address and other work details. A later version of the story had the link removed).
She was also accused of lying in an article about coverage of the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial when she claimed she had contacted certain YouTuber’s for comment before publishing her attack on them (they say she did not and she had no evidence to support her assertions). The Washington Post was forced to quietly stealth-edit her article in embarrassment.
The point is, Lorenz has made it clear by her actions that she views citizen journalists negatively if they aren’t on the political left. She has tried to sabotage them using dubious methods, and ironically it is this kind of behavior from corporate journalists like her that has led directly to the death of her industry. It is this kind of biased behavior that has compelled the public to seek out the alternative media and abandon legacy platforms.
No matter how much you hate journalists, it’s not enough
In a 2022 Pew Research poll of US mainstream journalists of all ages, over 55% said that they don’t believe all sides of any given story deserve equal coverage. The youngest journalists (ages 18-29) were the worst, with 63% saying they did not agree with equal coverage. Lorenz reflects this very sentiment as she rolls her eyes at the notion of objectivity in news writing.
In a similar poll, over 76% of the general public said they want equal coverage of all sides by the media. The disconnect between establishment news sources and what their audience wants is immense. Given that progressive ideology is greatly over-represented in most corporate media, the public has simply sought out the other side of the story.
Lorenz argues that she wouldn’t want to live in a world where people get their news from sixty second TikToks (while posting her appeal to TikTok), but she knows full well that it’s not TikTok journalism that’s taking the legs out from under organizations like The Washington Post – It’s the growing prevalence of the alternative media which she has lambasted for a large portion of her career.
That said, ultimately the picture Lorenz paints is actually a positive one (though she doesn’t realize it). The implosion of legacy media is an expression of the free market. The public has spoken and finally these people are suffering the consequences of their dishonest activities. And to be clear, no, legacy companies do not matter.
They are not special or integral to the economy or to society. They are not “too big to fail” and their collapse should be applauded after the years of disinformation and propaganda they have excreted on the doorsteps of the American populace. They deserve this and the world is better off without them. They are already being replaced with better companies and better journalists; may the free market run its course.
Oh, and in case anyone was wondering – while corporate media has been imploding, ZeroHedge has been growing. We thank you for your readership.
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It’s all about platform size. Obviously anyone with a huge platform is full of shit and on the cabal payroll.
Apparently Pravda doesn’t work in a quasi-capitalist realm.
You mean the average citizen is finally catching on to what us “conspiracy theorists” have known all along? Say it isn’t so!
Is that so!
The Democrats would bail out their official mouthpiece before ever letting it collapse completely.
Don’t forget Sports Illustrated laying off their entire staff. From the sublime to the ridiculous….
Do I vote up or down?
I know.
I’ll vote up,
Then down.
______
From hotsy, to notsy.
Ugly fat cunt.
I never was a porno site guy. But the old sports illustrated covers always got a second look.
i prefer women without dicks,or 150 excess pounds.
The fat chick doesn’t even have a pretty face. At least Ashley Graham has a nice face.
Go woke, Go broke. Good riddance.
Fuck them all.
Journowhores need to learn to mine coal.
According to FJB. CODE!
I like that as an in sult. Go mine some coal. Lol.
How hard is it to get AI to write “Trump supporters are racist”?
One computer could do the “work” of 10,000 journalists.
Lorenz’s beliefs that “journalism”, as a whole, is crashing, shows just how detatched these twits are.
The fact that they don’t think providing balanced views on a story is needed reflects the depth of their mental deficancies.
“Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the “news of the day” and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation, the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles. Wikipedia”
I like how wikishit adds “…at least SOME degree of acuracy”
If it’s not acurate, it’s a lie or propaganda.
They intentionally mislead.
That’s NOT journalism.
Journalism has never been more alive in the history of the world.
…’The Entire Journalism Industry Is In Freefall’ !!!
I fear that it will be the sudden stop at the end…
So why does the Controlled ZOG MSM stink like a rotten skunk in a ditch?
That is only a small subset of journalism (if you can call ZMSM journalism) that is getting less relevant everyday.
Nonstop, brazen, pathological lying has consequences, bitch.
I find myself checking out of all the media, even the sites I normally agree with. I have come to believe that the need “to keep up with currents events” is basically neurotic. There is basically nothing I can do in 90% of what is being reported on, so I’m just wasting my life away, one click at a times.
More or less same.
I’m starting to feel that way too. I used to like to read everything every single day because I like to be informed but things are so bad now it just gets me down to read it all so I’ve been pulling away. I only read like 2-3 sites now and if the news is really awful I just give up and do something mindless. Sometimes you just have to tune out for your mental health.
With so much going on it is a lot harder to keep up AND do due diligence, that is for sure.
Keeping up with current events is neurotic.
That’s why I never keep up with current “events”.
I look at everything claimed as a maybe? Or maybe not.
Once I figured out people in power lie to get what they want and news people just regurgitate their particular version of “nationalism” without even discernment of a two year old, I crossed the Rubicon from credulous lies gulped down regularly to “fooled me a few million times, shame on me” but no mas…shame on you liars!
Even dim-witted democrats see thru the CONSTANT LIES.
The Genocide CV-19 Shot helped to open millions of Useless Idiot’s eyes. Who really believes the MSM polls that put a race between FJB and DJT at 49 to 51%? Probably only about 10% of registered voters would actually bother to go themselves to a polling place to vote for him; about 85 million FJB votes were probably “affirmative voting”. PS: Liberalism is a Demonic Cancer that destroys Souls (and minds).
The Communist Democrats resemble your remark, rhs.
The Genocide CV-19 Shot helped to permanently close millions of Useless Idiot’s eyes.
Fixed.
I think she’s going to have to sell her ass to survive. Who will be the bastard that follows her around every corner?
Fed up with zionist tripe?
Burn baby, burn…
Watching the Lügenpresse and its presstitutes suffer as they enter the final chapter of the entire mendacious narrative is going to be quite satisfactory.
“Journalism” is a workfare program.
The Great Khaan is pleased, freefalling journalism industry is good news !!!
They are going broke because they aren’t journalists, they are propagandists for a criminal empire.
Commenters are putting a lot of stock in this word “journalism”.
Journalism has always been propaganda. Journalists have always been propagandists.
Exceptions only prove the rule.
If you believe otherwise; then the “journalism” worked.
I used to watch vice until they began running commercials telling me i was racist. I emailed them about this stupidity as i am married to a puerto rican woman and was offended by the nagging at every commercial break. So i stopped watching. This was 2018. I said at the time they’d end up losing their viewers if they did not change. And here we are.
I grew up reading the newspaper and always enjoyed the feel of something real in my hand, except for the ink left on the fingers sometimes. I gave up newspapers in the late 80’s due to the far left tone that had taken over the local Memphrica Commercial Appeal. When travelling, I will still pick up the free USA Today available at most hotels and give it a skim with my morning coffee, but it usually just confirms my decision.
Vice and Buzzfeed are more examples of ‘go woke-go broke’. Let the TQ pollute higher mgmt, kiss your ass goodbye.
taylor lorenz talks about this as if it is a problem. We couldn’t be happier that these paid media whores are not finding any honest work to do. Maybe they can learn to code. All four car washes in my town have help wanted signs.