McClatchy Guts Newsrooms Nationwide

I predicted McClatchy newspapers’ demise, but that was 20 years ago. I did not think it would take so long.

“The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild is shocked and disappointed by @mcclatchy‘s decision to lay off 33% of its unionized workers at the Idaho Statesman, The News Tribune (Tacoma), Tri-City Herald, The Olympian and Bellingham Herald. This includes 10 journalists in Idaho, and seven across Washington,” the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild said in a statement on X. “McClatchy has decided that short-term profits for a hedge fund matter more than the wellbeing of the communities that its newspapers are supposed to serve,” “That is a model that is destined to fail.”

Poynter reported:

McClatchy cut more than 90 newsroom jobs across the country Thursday, in what is clearly its most severe round of layoffs in years. The cuts included reporters, photographers and videographers and affected coverage ranging from government and education to accountability to sports. At least 13 papers across eight states lost staff, including The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and The Kansas City Star — lost reporters.”

The layoffs are part of a companywide restructuring, according to a notice McClatchy gave to the Pacific Media Workers Guild, which represents journalists at three McClatchy California papers.

“McClatchy is reshaping its newsroom structure to more closely align resources with changing subscriber interests and the ways audiences engage with local news,” the notice read. “As part of this change, we’re focusing resources on journalism that subscribers value and that can have the highest impact in the communities we serve.

“This change is not a reflection of the individual’s performance or contributions, but of our commitment to positioning the organization for long-term sustainability and growth.”

In 2020, it filed for bankruptcy and was acquired by Chatham Asset Management. Since then, it has shed staff and papers. Just last year, the company shuttered its Washington, D.C. bureau, and over the summer it sold two of its Georgia papers to the National Trust for Local News.

I wrote for McClatchy’s Sacramento Bee 20 years ago at the invitation of a talented business editor who encouraged my perspective as they often countered the usual left leaning and biased op-eds on the opinion pages… until one very toxic, partisan leftist editor replaced him and started challenging me on my sources, my data, and even my topic choices.

I remember an op-ed I wrote about Sacramento’s Regional Transit public transit system, challenging their decision to prioritize light rail trains over the very effective bus system, when they rerouted the buses to feed the trains. I used research from Texas A&M, as well as Regional Transit’s own data.

The toxic editor demanded to know why I used the peer reviewed Texas A&M research. He just stopped answering emails unhappy with my answers to his questions.

I predicted this. They only survived as long as they did because of sponsored content, grants, and other “philanthropic” grants for specific types of “journalism” covering health, climate change, education, government, etc. It was not news reporting, but too often propaganda, disinformation, even indoctrination, often paid for by the sponsors to achieve the outcome they wanted. 

McClatchy lost its way. Long ago they tacked left with heavily biased reporting, ignoring important news that differed from their agenda, and openly rooting for one political party over the other.

In the U.S., trust in mass media has collapsed from roughly 70% in the 1970s to historic lows, according to Gallup:

Americans’ confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago.

Meanwhile, seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%).

The Wrap reports:

When you pivot from the actual mission and purpose, this is what happens.

In the internal memo that accompanied the cuts, Greg Farmer, the executive vice president of local news, wrote that consumer revenue had fallen 41 percent over five years while local-news expenses stayed flat. “We cannot continue investing where subscriber interest does not support the investment,” he said.

Then came the farfetched closer: McClatchy remains “deeply committed” to local journalism.

Rather than investing in AI and influencers, McClatchy should have invested in experienced business managers and economists.

Hedge fund Chatham Asset Management bought McClatchy out of bankruptcy in 2020. It later merged with a lifestyle-magazine operation (Us Weekly, In Touch, etc.), Poynter reported.

I am not celebrating McClatchy’s collapse; I mourned McClatchy’s self-inflicted demise years ago.