Voice of San Diego / Andrew Donohue
This is the beginning of the end for the San Diego Union-Tribune →“The buyouts have been staggered, so every now and again, they still get a goodbye email from another colleague. Internally, one newsroom worker said employees estimate that somewhere between 60 and 80 people are left from the 108-person newsroom under Soon-Shiong. Another said the mostly editorial staff meetings that used to have between 100 to120 people now feature 50 to 60. If the newsroom is now at, say, 75 people, that would be just 18 percent of its 2006 size.”
AL.com / Howard Koplowitz
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Marina Adami
Seven takeaways on global press freedom from the recent Thomson Reuters Trust Conference →“[Governments] are getting creative in their tactics to persecute and silence the press, in some cases moving away from ‘traditional’ legal means such as defamation suits. Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, the barrister representing jailed Hong Kong journalist and Apple News founder Jimmy Lai, as well as his son Sebastien Lai, reiterated this point in a panel on protecting journalists against lawfare — a term used to mean legal attacks. ‘This new trend of law being used in a creative way to try to silence the journalists and also to slur the messenger is a new thing we’re seeing,’ she said.”
Washington Post / Taylor Lorenz
Content creators surge past legacy media as news hits a tipping point →“It’s always uncomfortable for me being in these rooms where there’s so much doom and gloom about journalism and the business of journalism,” said Johnny Harris, “a journalist whose YouTube channel has more than 4 million followers, covers global news and geopolitical conflicts and conducts deep investigations into targets such as the Mormon Church and the flat earther movement.”
The New York TImes / Katie Robertson
The New York Times / Katie Robertson and Benjamin Mullin
Condé Nast will cut 5% of its workforce →The publisher is abandoning plans for an in-house video studio. “Roger Lynch, the chief executive of Condé Nast, told workers in a note on Wednesday morning that the cuts were a response to digital advertising pressures, a decline in social media traffic and shifting audience behaviors, including a move to short-form video.”
Financial Times / Kate Duguid, Joshua Franklin, Ortenca Aliaj, and James Fontanella-Khan