Another round of layoffs at The Wall Street Journal
Another day, more grim layoff news at a noted news organization.
According to several reports, The Wall Street Journal had more cuts Wednesday. The Daily Beast’s Corbin Bolies reported that the video and social media desks were most impacted.
The number of layoffs was 11, according to Bolies: four producers on the visuals desk, two social media editors, two video journalists, a senior video journalist, a video producer and one reporter.
Boiles wrote, “Some of the video staffers laid off include those in the Journal’s Journalists as Creators program, a partnership with Google to develop YouTube channels centered around individual journalists and subject matters. Staffers were told that the agreement was not renewed and the funding for those staffers had lapsed, a Journal staffer told The Daily Beast.”
These layoffs come less than two months after 20 staffers were let go from the Journal’s Washington bureau.
Boiles added, “The newspaper has since laid off various foreign correspondents and standards and ethics editors in recent months, including veteran editor Christine Glancey and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Dion Nissenbaum, who covered the Middle East.”
From the inside
I wrote in Wednesday’s newsletter about internal drama at NPR that has media followers on the outside paying attention. Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, blasted the news organization in a piece for The Free Press: “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” Berliner criticized NPR for a variety of things, including the suggestion that NPR has become an activist organization and sacrificed journalistic integrity in the process.
NPR editor-in-chief Edith Chapin responded in a memo to staff defending the news organization, saying in part, “I and my colleagues on the leadership team strongly disagree with Uri’s assessment of the quality of our journalism and the integrity of our newsroom processes. We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories.”
NPR’s David Folkenflik weighed in on his own company in “NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust.”
Folkenflik gave the story fair treatment but also noted, “Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.
Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.”
Alfonso told Folkenflik, “As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity. These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done.”
Folkenflik wrote that Berliner declined comment originally, saying his essay spoke for itself. But after Folkenflik’s story was first published, Berliner addressed Alfonso’s comment by saying, “I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals. That's wrong."
Meanwhile, not surprisingly, Donald Trump jumped all over this story, especially the part in Berliner’s essay where Berliner wrote, “Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.”
On his Truth Social, Trump wrote, “NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO ‘DAMAGE TRUMP.’ THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!”
Trying too hard
The New York Post is sometimes going to, well, New York Post, if you catch my meaning. Part of their appeal is gossip — gossip about celebrities, politicians, athletes and what have you. They turned Page Six — once the page where all the juicy gossip could be found — into its own signature brand.
And, hey, who doesn’t like some good gossip now and then? Like who was seen “canoodling” with whom at some low-lit bar? Which actors are feuding? Who’s getting married and who’s getting divorced?
But sometimes in pursuit of something hot, you look silly. Take this week. The Post tweeted out two photos of legendary actor Gene Hackman, now 94 and retired, outside of a gas station with a cup of coffee and a little box of apple pie. The tweet said, “Gene Hackman, 94, spotted in new photos wearing nearly identical outfit from weeks earlier.”
The tweet linked to a story about a rare public sighting of Hackman.
But about that tweet, which showed two photos of Hackman wearing the same thing: gray pants, a flannel shirt with a sweater vest and a white ball cap.
OK, a few things about this. One, is there really no other celebrity news that Hackman’s perfectly respectable clothes are worth talking about? And, I don’t know about you, but I don’t throw away my clothes after wearing them once. I do wear the same pants and shirt combinations repeatedly,
But here’s the kicker. X put this context note on the Post tweet: “The two photos shown with the headline about ‘identical outfits’ are misleading because they are images of Hackman taken during the same day. The outfit worn ‘weeks earlier’ that is referred to involved a completely different shirt and pants; only the vest and hat are the same.”
The Post took a beating on social media, as Mediaite’s Zachary Leeman noted.
Making a difference
