2020 was a scary year before I started tracking all the layoffs and closures in our industry. Then, that work became nearly all my work. By the summer, I was talking with a group of journalists who wanted to know more about the people who had lost their jobs.
The resulting story didn’t answer that question because it couldn’t. It was, instead, about the stunning lack of transparency the news industry offers when people get laid off.
We still don’t have great data about the people who are getting laid off in our industry. But a new project might help us get there.
The Institute for Independent Journalists is “an education, professional development, and mutual support organization for freelance journalists, focusing on Black, Indigenous and people of color,” Katherine Reynolds Lewis told me in an email. “Our mission is financial and emotional sustainability for independent journalists of color, through community learning, innovation and advocacy. One reason we're concerned about mass layoffs is that every round of layoffs create new freelancers, many of whom don't know how to make a living at it and really struggle.”
IIJ is conducting a layoff census. Here’s my conversation with Lewis about that work:
Kristen Hare: Tell us about this work. How did you decide to pursue it?
Katherine Reynolds Lewis: The Institute for Independent Journalists Foundation's layoff census is a data journalism project aiming to understand the demographics of the talent leaving newsrooms because of mass layoffs. Anecdotally, we hear that many young journalists of color are losing their jobs in the mass layoffs at the Los Angeles Times and others. Journalism employers have become more secretive about the diversity of employees and the impact of layoffs on newsroom demographics. Up until 2019, news organizations voluntarily shared the diversity of their workforce with the News Leaders Association, but as more and more refused to cooperate, NLA had to sunset the survey.
In an attempt to capture similar data, we created a simple survey that takes a census of laid-off journalists, including their race, gender, age, disability and LGBTQ+ identity. It's voluntary to complete and takes only five to seven minutes on average. We will keep all individual responses completely confidential, unless someone explicitly agrees to be publicly quoted in a subsequent interview or email exchange. So far we've received over 120 responses and we hope this is just the beginning. You can see the bios of the journalists working on the project here. We are so grateful to have received a Field Foundation grant to support the project.
I've been in journalism for more than 20 years and I've been so frustrated that the problems the industry had at the beginning of my career still haven't been solved: newsrooms dominated by white, straight, older journalists who collectively don't reflect the diversity of the communities they cover; poor job security and limited income potential in a journalism career, especially if you want to remain a reporter; news organizations happy to give internships and first jobs to young queer journalists of color but then quick to lay them off; and very few newsrooms that value, recruit or retain trans or disabled journalists or people with caregiving responsibilities. I covered workplace issues for part of my career and was always struck at how far behind journalism is from every other profession — such as law, medicine, or consulting — in supporting employees' personal lives and commitments and recognizing that the "always-on" employee isn't going to produce the best work. And of course, the industry has been looking for a sustainable business model for journalism for as long as I've been a journalist. It makes me angry to see so many talented, committed, hard-working journalists chewed up by this industry.
Hare: How does 2023 compare to other recent years in terms of layoffs?
Lewis: News organizations cut 3,087 jobs in digital, broadcast and print news in 2023, according to Challenger, Grey & Christmas. That's 70% higher than the 1,808 jobs lost in 2022 and nearly double the 1,511 layoffs in 2021. One reason I think it feels apocalyptic is that the stock market is booming, the economy is doing well, and yet our industry is cratering.
Hare: How will the census be used?
Lewis: We will analyze the aggregated census results and report on any trends or patterns we see in a Nieman Reports article, as well as sharing results at conferences and in webinars. If this project is successful, we hope it could be the foundation for better industrywide data about the diversity of journalists both in and out of newsrooms. We're working with journalism affinity groups, professional associations, journalism unions, and organizations that offer career advice to journalists to spread the word about the survey. We'd love to partner with anyone else interested in working on these issues.
You can participate in the census here.
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