Vox Sentences - Gutting layoffs

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UP FIRST: What’s behind gutting media and tech layoffs

CATCH UP: The big takeaways from New Hampshire

—Li Zhou, senior reporter

Gutting layoffs

Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Los Angeles Times, Time, and National Geographic became the latest media outlets to do a gutting wave of layoffs this week, letting go journalists who cover everything from the 2024 election to sports to business accountability. 

These cuts add to thousands of others that have occurred since last year as media outlets struggle to grow their audiences and update their revenue models. The layoffs have decimated coverage of critical issues across numerous publications.

At the LA Times, more than 20 percent of the newsroom has been laid off, with these cuts disproportionately impacting young Black, Latino, and Asian American writers, according to the LA Times union. And at Time, about 15 percent of the unionized editorial staff has been laid off, its union said. As of Wednesday, it was not immediately clear how many people had been affected at National Geographic. 

This week's cuts are part of a new round of layoffs in media and tech this winter. Condé Nast, NBC News, Sports Illustrated, and our own Vox Media are among the media companies that have conducted layoffs in the last few months. In tech, Google, Spotify, Discord, and eBay are among the companies that have done the same. 

According to the employment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, 2023 was the worst year for news media layoffs in years, surpassing the number of cuts the industry saw in both 2022 and 2021. Tech similarly had a high number of layoffs that year compared to the prior year. Though both industries have been hit particularly hard, the cuts have also been driven by different factors:

• What’s driving layoffs in media: Media layoffs have taken place as advertising revenue has declined and as advertisers increasingly invest ad dollars in tech platforms instead of news publications. Some newsrooms have struggled to keep readers amid these declines. And acquisitions by hedge funds and large corporations have also fueled job losses and consolidation. 
• What’s driving layoffs in tech: Tech companies have made cuts as they make new investments in virtual reality and AI, shift resources away from other initiatives, and continue to roll back some of the hiring they made during the pandemic. Higher interest rates have also made it more expensive for companies to borrow, meaning less funding to grow in the near term. And companies are using layoffs to juice metrics important to investors.
• The state of the labor market overall: The developments in these two areas aren’t necessarily indicative of the broader state of the labor market, which varies by industry. “These layoffs are still a small percentage of the overall employment in the United States,” Cory Stahle, a labor economist at Indeed, tells Vox. Health care, education, and government are among the fields adding jobs, adds Glassdoor economist Daniel Zhao. 

What we learned in New Hampshire

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump won his second major primary on Tuesday, beating former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, 54 percent to 43 percent. Trump’s win reaffirms his dominance in the GOP field, but Haley’s performance gave her just enough support to stay in the race for now. 

The big question going into New Hampshire, a state where independent voters can participate in the Republican primary, was whether Haley could make enough gains to fully upset Trump. As the thinking went, if she was able to win in New Hampshire, that could help her gain broader traction, raising her poll numbers in states where she’s still lagging behind Trump by large margins. 

Haley didn’t quite get the upset she needed, but Trump didn’t get a blowout win, either.

• What we learned about Trump: Trump’s strong polling doesn’t seem to be a mirage. He has resilient support from the Republican base and continues to be the favorite to win the nomination.
• What we learned about Haley: Although Haley didn’t win, she lost to Trump by just over 10 points — a margin closer than some polls predicted. Trump has a solid grip on his voter base, but a sizable proportion of independents — and some Republicans — are open to Haley's candidacy. 
• Where things go from here: Haley’s New Hampshire performance may have been solid, but things get tougher for her from here. In both Nevada and South Carolina, polls have shown her trailing Trump by double digits. It’s possible New Hampshire could be the strongest showing she’ll see this primary cycle. 

• Tick, tick, doom: Scientists set the Doomsday Clock — which measures how close humanity is to destroying itself — as 90 seconds away from apocalypse given nuclear and climate threats. [BBC]

• The allegations against Fulton County DA, explained: A look at the allegations of impropriety against Fani Willis, the prosecutor in Trump’s Georgia elections case, and what they could mean for the case. [AP]

• Russian plane crash: A Russian plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war has crashed near the country’s border, with Russia blaming Ukraine for shooting it down. Ukraine has not directly commented on these allegations. [NYT]

2 winners and 2 losers from the New Hampshire primary

What would it take for Nikki Haley to win at this point?

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Surprise! There’s a reason to be (cautiously) optimistic about the climate.

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