Jack, over the weekend Google announced that it was laying off 40 staff members from its news division. Just hours later, American General Media, a radio company with stations mostly in California, announced company-wide staff reductions.

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Chances are you didn't hear about the layoffs at Google or American General Media and they won't affect your day-to-day life. However, when you look at the larger picture this is a very dire situation for news outlets. In the first five months of this year, news outlets had already laid off a record number of employees—17,436—more than the "media extinction event" we experienced during the pandemic.

The future for media news outlets is bleak. Back in August, when the non-profit The Texas Tribune announced that it was laying off 10% of its employees it cited the major reason was a “tough budget year” in 2024.

This is important: 2024 will be a pivotal year for our country. We cannot have our news outlets financially handicapped.

The financial problems plaguing news outlets is multifaceted and there is no clear or easy solution. Just last week when Jeff Bezos's Washington Post announced they were doing yet another round of layoffs, they noted reasons the uncertain economy, dwindling advertising revenue (ironically, this largely due to Big Tech, like Bezos's Amazon sucking up more and more of the digital ad revenue), and changes in how readers get their news.

Daily Kos is no stranger to these financial struggles. Earlier this year, under financial pressure, Daily Kos was forced to make deep cuts and other changes in hopes of putting us on a financially sustainable footing. Over the last ten months, we have started to see the impacts of those changes, but we aren't out of the woods yet. Even though our advertising revenue has trended upwards, it has still continually missed projections. Daily Kos has relied more and more on small-dollar donations from our community to keep providing the quality of content and actions you have come to expect from us.

Daily Kos exists to deliver progressive news and fight for democracy by giving our readers and activists the information and resources needed to create impactful change. This will be vital in 2024. Please support Daily Kos with a donation of $5 or an amount that is meaningful to you.

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Thank you for all you do,
Amanda McKay, Daily Kos

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