Yesterday, the large news publisher McClatchy laid off more than 90 unionized journalists and media workers across 17 publications. They represent about 30% of all McClatchy workers unionized with The NewsGuild-CWA, at news outlets like The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and The Kansas City Star.
These are journalists and other workers who have been asked to adjust, bend, mold and fit into an ever-changing business, some working for decades at McClatchy. They’ve done so seamlessly.
Their reward? They lost their jobs, cut by a company that should spend as much time figuring out how to use high-skilled employees as it does replacing their work with AI.
The departure of these talented reporters, visual journalists and writers will immediately leave gaping holes in local coverage for dozens of communities across the United States.
These are the journalists and the coverage communities are now left without, as told by the publications’ workers:
Bellingham Herald, The Olympian, Tacoma News Tribune, Tri-City Herald (Washington)
Our four newsrooms in Washington lost seven reporters, including five in the state’s second-largest city and county.
Tacoma will no longer have even a single dedicated journalist tracking city hall, Pierce County government or local schools. The rapidly growing suburbs and rural towns around us will become a veritable news desert.
Washington’s sports reporter of the year twice over, after decades committed to McClatchy, was deemed expendable along with his loyal following, while student athletes will be left with just one observer.
An award-winning investigative reporter – who, among many deep-dives, helped reveal how failed city policies, neighborhood neglect and persistent poverty earned one street the police nickname of “Tacoma’s deadliest” – was told that readers didn’t care.
The region near the Canadian border lost an environmental watchdog, and the Hispanic community can no longer turn to a Spanish-speaking reporter in Eastern Washington.
Bradenton Herald (Florida)
With McClatchy’s layoffs, the Bradenton Herald lost:
- A photojournalist who documented the heart and soul of our community for 27 years, capturing moments of joy, pain, intrigue, growth, loss and change – in short, everyday life in Manatee County, Florida;
- An accountability reporter who kept close watch over local government at the city and county level, providing in-depth and breaking news coverage the community could find nowhere else;
- An editor and reporter who split time between improving the quality of our news coverage and delving into issues most important to our community, including: local government, the environment, water quality and development.
These layoffs leave the Bradenton Herald with half of its former staff, or only one editor and two reporters. There will be no one to report on local government and no professional photographer and videographer to document the news.
Centre Daily Times (Pennsylvania)
The Centre Daily Times, which was recently honored with a dozen Keystone Awards for standout journalism, lost three of its five news reporters Thursday. Among them:
- Education/Business reporter who was often first in the area to report on local school district issues, new restaurants and so much more.
- Town and Gown reporter who aimed to hold one of the country’s largest universities (Penn State) accountable while also covering the most-populated municipality (State College) in the region. Both the town and gown are undergoing critical changes, including the upcoming closure of seven commonwealth campuses and the first major rewrite of the borough’s zoning code in more than 50 years.
- Local Government/Development reporter who was responsible for overseeing 34 of Centre County’s 35 municipalities, in addition to the Centre County Commissioners and others.
That leaves a managing editor, a visuals editor, two news reporters and one sports reporter. We don’t know what coverage of our community will look like now. This rural area has been home to multiple national stories, most recently the off-campus cocaine trafficking ring tied to a Penn State frat, and we struggled to cover it all before.
We’re beside ourselves. We worry about each other, but we’re also concerned for our community. A less informed public is a less empowered public.
Charlotte Observer (North Carolina)
Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in America. Yet McClatchy cut reporters who readers rely on for the latest news on education, public safety and transportation. They also cut an award-winning photographer who helped spearhead critical visual storytelling on an investigation about how police handled the case of a 16-year-old Black girl who was found hanging in a churchyard.
McClatchy also fired the Observer’s only two investigative reporters who, since joining last October, have exposed bad doctors, a fraudulent log cabin company, assaults on city bus drivers and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s poor handling of the aforementioned hanging case.
One of the investigative reporters was also the newspaper’s sole data reporter, who was responsible for managing election data, helping the entire newsroom with numbers and charts and also publishing regular data-dives on ICE arrests, which were popular with readers.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
The Star-Telegram lost reporters who have produced invaluable work for their community, including a suburban reporter who covered data center developments in the rapidly growing DFW Metroplex; a service journalism reporter who has rapidly answered readers questions on state laws and surveillance technology; a local news reporter who worked as a jack of all trades, covering school board meetings, wheat farmers and billion-dollar government contracts; and a digital sports reporter who covered everything from the World Cup to the World Series.
Fresno Bee (California)
Fresno Bee lost:
- An accountability reporter who won the San Joaquin Valley’s most prestigious journalism award in each of the past two years for reporting on the treatment of poultry workers and for Border Patrol raids through the agriculture-heavy region.
- The last remaining employee of the groundbreaking bilingual publication of Vida en el Valle.
- A photographer who told the stories of the Valley for 27 years, regularly bringing home awards for everything from sports moments to the splendor of Yosemite National Park.
- A dogged investigative reporter who shined a light on Fresno State in the wake of a sex scandal that brought down the former president of the school who had moved on to lead the California State University System.
Idaho Statesman (Idaho)
The state’s (formerly) largest newsroom lost 10 of its 18 journalists, including reporters who:
- Exposed Idaho’s crumbling school buildings, leading to a $2 billion investment from the state Legislature
- Uncovered claims that a major regional hospital ignored employees’ complaints about a surgeon with a history of injuring patients
- Revealed that the Idaho Department of Labor was failing to recoup workers’ stolen wages
- Humanized the victims and heroes of the mass shooting at the Twin Falls In-N-Out, breaking exclusive stories and angles on a national event in real time
- Wrote award-winning editorials and columns
- Spent 21 years as a jack-of-all-trades, covering everything from COVID to Division I basketball to breaking news
- Expanded our coverage into the region’s exploding suburbs, shining a light on under-reported areas
- Investigated state employees getting fired over social media posts
Kansas City Star (Missouri and Kansas)
We lost a team of government accountability reporters, journalists who question top leaders in Kansas City, inside the police department and throughout counties and geographical areas in the metro, including the most populated county in Kansas.
What happens when they’re gone? Three of these reporters are exposing corruption, secrecy and missteps inside the county surrounding KC, and one re-established our coverage in Eastern Jackson County. Another has created a newsletter for an underserved community, drawing more readers every day. One keeps residents in a thriving county on the Kansas side informed about municipal decisions that impact their daily lives. And yet another is covering an area north of KC that has been neglected for years.
The loss of these six talented reporters will be felt by readers and their colleagues who are better for working alongside them.
Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky)
The Herald-Leader, one of two remaining statewide newspapers in Kentucky, laid off half of its Pulitzer-prize-winning newsroom.
Those layoffs include a senior reporter who worked at the Herald-Leader for more than 20 years, all of the paper’s core political team covering the state legislature in Frankfort, the editor of that politics team, the newspaper’s primary city government reporter in Lexington, a longtime high school sports reporter, two University of Kentucky basketball and football reporters, the paper’s only remaining environmentalist reporter in Eastern Kentucky, the paper’s only regional economic development reporter, a photographer and a video journalist.
Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald (Florida)
After more than a century of operation, this layoff will leave the Miami Herald without a city hall reporter at the paper’s namesake. It guts the entire writing staff at El Nuevo Herald, our sister paper that has doggedly covered majority-Latino Miami-Dade county in Spanish for decades. We’re losing a superstar sports writer with three plus decades of experience who paved the way for women in sports coverage, an entire slate of young reporters just starting their careers in local news and our race and culture reporter who told important stories that have long been ignored in our community.
As our audience asks for more vertical video, McClatchy cut the people who make it — our only female photographer, our entire audience team and our sole video producer. With this layoff, we lose all reporters covering an entire South Florida county, Broward.
Modesto Bee (California)
Modesto Bee lost three reporters, or 25% of its newsroom, including an education reporter and a sports reporter. The cuts come just weeks after the departures of an accountability reporter, equity reporter and grant-funded local government reporter – positions that are not expected to be filled.
Sacramento Bee (California)
Sacramento’s paper of record lost dogged reporters and veteran journalists who worked for decades to serve readers in the capital region.
Among them, we lost a beloved high school sports reporter who has been in our newsroom for close to 40 years. Without him, high school athletes and their families will no longer see themselves reflected in the paper.
We lost a veteran journalist whose sharp eye and decades of experience brought depth and context to our visual coverage.
We also lost a reporter whose work held state and local leaders to account for wrongdoing and misconduct; a forceful sports reporter who told national stories through a local lens; and a longtime Bee journalist who delighted our readers with coverage that gave them a welcome bright spot in the paper.
The State (South Carolina)
In Columbia, we lost the only reporter doing environmental coverage for the state of South Carolina, a more than 30-year veteran of the local newsroom; an investigative reporter who was recognized by the S.C. Press Association for his work on charter schools; the only reporter covering the city of Columbia; the lead reporter on the Darline Graham Senate race; half of our photography team.
Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that McClatchy laid off 40% of its unionized workers. There are about 300 unionized workers at McClatchy represented by The NewsGuild-CWA, of which, McClatchy laid off at least 90 people. This post has been updated to reflect that about 30% of the unionized workers were laid off by the hedge fund controlled news chain.