Layoffs, partial unemployment measures and cuts in the salaries of managers have multiplied in the media with the coronavirus crisis, despite a strong interest from readers for information and all over the world, the collapse of the advertising market is weighing down.
First victims in the press
In France, the regional daily The Marseillaise, who was already fragile, was hit hard by the confinement and placed in liquidation.
The Parisian plans to abolish thirty posts and its departmental editions. Predicting three years of losses, the newspaper The team asked its employees to cut back on their salaries and RTT.
After the liquidation of Paris-Normandy, its Belgian buyer, the Rossel group, has announced that it will cut a quarter of the workforce, or 60 positions.
The buyer of Paris-Turf has also planned to lay off a hundred employees of the equestrian group. The new owner of the magazine Grazia announced for its part the elimination of 31 positions.
In the United Kingdom, the Guardian announced 180 layoffs, and the magazine The Economist 90.
In the United States, the Conde Nast group (Vogue, Wired, or the New Yorker) announced the dismissal of around 100 out of 6,000 employees. Vox Media (The Verge, New York Magazine) will lay off 72 employees, ie the majority of those placed on partial unemployment. The New York Times laid off 68 employees from its sales teams.
The McClatchy family group, which publishes around 20 newspapers including Miami herald, was sold to an investment fund, Chatham, after going into default.
Since the start of the crisis, more than 36,000 American news media employees, already squeezed in recent years, have been affected by cost cuts, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
Across the country, about fifty local newsrooms, sometimes 100 years old, have closed, according to a list updated by the Poynter site.
The web slows down
Information online is no better. The Vice Media group plans to lay off 55 employees in the United States and 100 abroad, according to a note sent by the group’s director to employees, revealed by the American media.
Beyond the health crisis, the leader accused the Gafa, web giants, of being a “threat” to online information and of taking “not just a bigger slice of the pie but the whole pie” , resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in journalism.
News and entertainment site Buzzfeed, which announced pay cuts of 5-25% depending on income level at the end of March, will also end its news coverage in the UK and in Australia, having already left France.
For some, the crisis is an opportunity to speed up the transition to a more stable subscription-based business model. This is the case of the American economic information site Quartz, whose owner announced the dismissal of around 40% of the workforce, mainly in the advertising network.
Audiovisual fires
The audiovisual industry has also initiated redundancies in the face of the first effects of the health crisis.
In the UK, the BBC has announced that it will cut 520 jobs out of a total of 6,000 employees, especially in its regional programs.
Journalists will cover fewer topics and work in centralized teams instead of focusing on a particular program, the BBC news director said.
In the United States, NBCUniversal has cut top salaries by 20%. And the giant ViacomCBS plans to lay off 10% of its 35,000 employees, in TV production but also in its theme parks, according to Bloomberg.
In France, BFMTV / RMC announced a social plan which aims in particular to halve the use of intermittents, freelancers and consultants.