This was a bad week to work in mainstream media. Between cable news firings, network restructurings, and major layoffs decimating the once-influential leading media startups of the 2010s, the media landscape today looks incredibly different than it did just seven days ago.
Summary
This was a bad week to work in mainstream media. Between cable news firings, network restructurings, and major layoffs decimating the once-influential leading media startups of the 2010s, the media landscape today looks incredibly different than it did just seven days ago.
- The first domino to fall was Buzzfeed News, which was shuttered seven days ago. Buzzfeed News was once the rising new media startup, powered by social media and notable for its role publishing the Steele Dossier in the weeks after the 2016 election. Those days are over.
- Three huge media personalities were ousted between Sunday evening and Monday morning. The first to go was NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, who was let go over an inappropriate relationship with an employee.
- Monday began with the sudden ouster of Tucker Carlson from Fox News. It’s still unclear why exactly Fox decided to get rid of Carlson, with the $787.5 million defamation settlement to Dominion Voting Systems blamed in part on Carlson, his workplace conduct, and his huge stature as the network’s leading voice all given as reasons for Fox’s decision to show him the door.
- Minutes later, CNN fired Don Lemon, who swiftly retained litigator Bryan Freedman in a sign of how acrimonious his departure was (Carlson has also hired Freedman). Lemon’s long and controversial tenure at the network finally came to an end after sexist remarks he made about women – specifically GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley – led to a national uproar.
- CBS cancelled “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” and the final episode aired on Thursday Night. Instead of replacing Corden, the network decided to cancel the 28-year-old show and replace it with a trivia game show that is expected to be significantly cheaper to produce.
- Disney is in the midst of a rolling series of layoffs as the company seeks to cut 7,000 positions, or roughly 3.2% of its global workforce.
- Disney’s latest round of layoffs hit its media divisions particularly hard after the first phase on March 30 saw much the departures of most of ABC News’ executive team. The latest round of job cuts focused on data journalism outlet FiveThirtyEight, where most of the senior leadership was laid off including founder Nate Silver.
- On Thursday, Vice Media announced it would shut down the “Vice News Tonight” TV program as part of a broader corporate restructuring that will also include layoffs. Vice Media has been plagued with “financial difficulties and top-executive departures” for years and is reportedly exploring a sale.
- To add insult to injury after a bad week for the mainstream media, a photographer captured President Joe Biden holding a cheat sheet with advance knowledge of a Los Angeles Times’ reporter’s question at a press conference.
- Ryan Lizza interviewed Ben Smith, the founder of Buzzfeed News, “the colossus of yesteryear’s viral reporting and the entity that published the infamous Steele Dossier about Donald Trump,” on the Politico Playbook Deep Dive podcast. Smith argues the seemingly unrelated media stories this week are all part of a broader trend and that the US is coming to “the end of an era in media, but that the next one might be something to look forward to.”
- The New York Times covered the FiveThirtyEight layoffs, in particular the departure of Nate Silver. “I am sad and disappointed to a degree that’s kind of hard to express right now. We’ve been at Disney almost 10 years,” Silver tweeted. “My contract is up soon and I expect that I’ll be leaving at the end of it.” Although he is being forced out, ABC News will retain the FiveThirtyEight brand.
- CNN defended Biden’s use of a cheat sheet as “more innocent than Biden’s critics make out” and instead made the argument that it was just a sign that Biden was “supremely prepared.” CNN compared the incident to when Donald Trump was photographed with a sheet of questions to ask survivors of the 2018 Parkland shooting, but of course those were questions for the President to ask others, not questions for reporters to ask the President.
- The New York Post covered the troubles plaguing “embattled” Vice Media. The Post noted the troubles facing Vice and other media outlets can be attributed in part to a weak economy and cutbacks in the advertising market.
- The Wall Street Journal also covered the demise of “Vice News Tonight.” The Journal reported Vice could eliminate more than 100 jobs as part of “the latest recalibration for the once-hot Brooklyn upstart… that has struggled for years to show rapid growth and live up to an early valuation of $5.7 billion.”
- National Review called Biden’s use of a cheat sheet “the new collusion scandal.” Not only has this collusion happened since the beginning of the administration, when “Trump-era White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders…asked certain news outlets about their questions” before high-profile events, her requests were completely rejected by the press.
Return to Freespoke 
© Dominic Moore, 2023
