By Max Rayman
In 2018, I graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice, but decided to pursue a different career path. With an open elective, I took an advanced sports writing class which put my life on a completely different course. That summer I started writing for a sports blog and by January of 2020, I had become a site-editor for FanSided’s Washington Nationals site.
Fast forward to now, and I am five months away from graduating with a master’s in journalism. Despite not having any prior journalism experience, I took a leap of faith and have yet to regret my decision.
Unfortunately, I have started to notice an unsettling trend. More and more journalism publications have begun downsizing. Just this past weekend, the Wall Street Journal made cuts to its Washington bureau. In January, Sports Illustrated announced they were going to lay off most of their staff. The LA Times also reduced its personnel last month, cutting almost 20% of its newsroom. In 2023, both the Washington Post and The Athletic made cuts to their organization, and sadly this is just the beginning. According to Kierra Frazier of Politico, over 500 journalists were laid off in January alone.
“The job cuts come after an already bleak year. The news industry shed 3,087 digital, broadcast, and print news jobs in 2023 — the highest annual total since 2020, when 16,060 cuts were recorded,” Frazier wrote.
Selfishly, when I read that statistic, I became fearful. But not fearful for the journalism industry, but for myself. As a 28-year-old who will be starting the job search soon, how do I get my foot in the door, when I am competing against plenty of talented reporters and journalists who have more experience but were unexpectedly let go? I dedicated the majority of my early to mid-20s to chasing a dream and I don’t want the last six years to go to waste.
Pushing my personal fears aside, what’s next for the industry? How can these publications continue to work at a high level with a reduced workforce? I am not the only one with these worries.
“What concerns me is with all of these losses and this loss of coverage is that it’s only going to fuel more misinformation and disinformation into communities,” Tim Franklin, senior associate dean at Northwestern’s Medill journalism told Politico. “How do you then combat that challenge?”
In addition to mounting layoffs, multiple publications held walkouts over the past 12 months due to pay issues and the pending layoffs. The LA Times had a 24-hour walkout after it was announced they were going to downsize – the first time since they started printing in 1881. Unfortunately, the higher-ups still went through with the layoffs despite their employee’s vocal disagreement.
There will always be a need for journalists, and I am excited about what the future holds for me, yet this is an unforgiving industry. The ongoing layoffs shouldn’t be seen as a deterrent, but instead as a brutal reminder that this career path can be at times remorseless. But if everything in life was easy, then where would the fulfillment come from?