The list of media industry woes in just the first month of the year could fill the covers of every tabloid at the CVS checkout.

We’ll work backward: Yesterday, Paramount Global announced an unspecified amount of layoffs, Business Insider said it was laying off 8% of its staff, and the Forbes editorial union launched a strike through Monday before the company announced cuts. That was only half of it:

• More than 400 union members across Condé Nast brands—including Allure, Architectural Digest, Teen Vogue, GQ, and Vanity Fair—walked off the job on Tuesday for 24 hours to protest a potential cut of 5% of its staff (about 300 people).
• The Los Angeles Times eliminated more than 110 positions on Tuesday, one of the biggest cuts in the paper’s history.
• And last week, the Sports Illustrated newsroom was effectively gutted.

Oh, and Anna Wintour informed Pitchfork employees of layoffs while wearing her sunglasses.

*deep breath*

It’s not just this year—2023 saw the most media job cuts in the last 20 years, outside of recessions.

A million reasons

Media companies once focused their energies on optimizing content for social media and search engines like Google, but these channels aren’t proving fruitful. Advertisers also started to get roasted for their ads popping up next to not-so-pleasant news coverage, so many have ditched news altogether.

And while billionaires like Marc Benioff, Jeff Bezos, and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong showed up thinking they could turn publications like Time magazine, The Washington Post, and the LA Times around…well…they didn’t. The Washington Post alone lost about $100 million in revenue last year.

Don’t count on another “Trump Bump.” Media companies rode Trump’s presidency—and the chaos that came with it—to higher subscriptions and page views. But that waned when Biden took office. Experts predict it won’t come back in this election cycle, either, as the public could feel more fatigued this time around.—MM

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GDP go boom. US GDP grew 3.3% in Q4, per the Commerce Department, annihilating Wall Street’s expectations of 2% growth. For the year, the US economy expanded 2.5% in 2023, up from 1.9% in 2022. That also outpaced Wall Street’s estimates from the beginning of the year. The growth was driven by strong consumer spending made possible by rising wages and a sturdy job market, even as the country dealt with inflation. That, too, improved in Q4: Prices increased 2.7% on an annual basis, down from a 5.9% increase the year prior. The GDP smash adds more fuel to the expectation that the Fed will cut interest rates this year.

Microsoft laid off 1,900 gaming employees. The cuts across Xbox and Activision Blizzard account for 8% of Microsoft’s video game division. The tech giant closed on its $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty-maker Activision Blizzard in October and has since made several leadership changes. CEO Bobby Kotick stepped down in December, and now Blizzard President Mike Ybarra has decided to leave, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. An upcoming survival game has also been canceled. The cuts come as several gaming-related companies, including Twitch, Discord, Unity, and Riot Games, have conducted layoffs.

WWE founder Vince McMahon was accused of sex trafficking. In a lawsuit filed Thursday, former WWE employee Janel Grant alleged that McMahon sexually abused and trafficked her “as a pawn to secure talent deals.” The suit also named former WWE head of talent relations John Laurinaitis as a defendant. McMahon resigned as CEO in 2022 as the company investigated allegations that he paid women to keep quiet about alleged sexual misconduct. WWE later revealed that McMahon made nearly $20 million in hush money payments to accusers. He’s currently the executive chairman of WWE’s parent company, TKO Group, which just secured a $5 billion deal to put Monday Night Raw on Netflix.

Following a string of attacks on expats who used dating apps in some of Colombia’s largest cities, Tinder warned singles in the South American country this week to be wary of whom they swipe right on.

At least eight US citizens in Medellín, Colombia, died in November and December either from suspected overdoses or homicides, often after meeting up with local women from dating apps, according to the US Embassy. Dozens of other male tourists met up with Tinder or Bumble matches and reportedly woke up hours later to find that their bank accounts had been emptied and their devices stolen. Sometimes, they’ve been beaten up.

What’s going on? Local catfishers/thieves are slipping Americans and other foreigners a sedative known as “devil’s breath.” The drug is odorless and makes people suggestible enough to hand over personal belongings, passwords, and other sensitive info before it knocks them out.

More visitors, more snatchings. Drawn by a vibrant nightlife and a digital nomad visa program, remote workers and tourists have mobbed Medellín—and thieves consider robbing them to be like a tax on wealthy gentrifiers, local officials say. Thefts against foreigners in the city have tripled in a little over a year.—ML

Looks like there’s gonna be one less lonely rhino. Scientists in Berlin announced this week that they successfully transferred a rhino embryo into the womb of a female rhino through in vitro fertilization (IVF) for the first time, marking a huge step forward in efforts to save the northern white rhino, a near-extinct subspecies.

IVF is a common process for humans, horses, and cows, but it had never been used before with rhinos. The transplant is a major win for reproductive scientists and adds to a growing list of species that could come out of extinction with the help of IVF:

• In 2022, scientists at the University of Queensland created the world’s first donkey embryo via IVF.
• Olaf, a Puerto Rican crested toad, was the first amphibian to be hatched as a result of IVF used with frozen sperm.
• Scientists at the University of Newcastle use “biobanking,” or the practice of preserving sperm, to support koala population recovery.

What’s next? Due to poaching, only two northern white rhinos are left on Earth—a mother, Najin, and daughter, Fatu. The scientists’ experiment used one of Fatu’s eggs and the preserved sperm of deceased male northern white rhinos to make the embryo. The resultant embryo was implanted in a southern white rhino, a close cousin of the northern white rhino. Now scientists will try to replicate the procedure with one of the two remaining northern white rhinos.—CC

Quote: “It was an astonishing amount of money.”

The White Lotus actor Tom Hollander is an excellent thespian in his own right, but, cruelly, he is not Spider-Man. That would be the similarly named Tom Holland, a fact Hollander was reminded of when he was sent Holland’s Avengers box-office bonus by mistake. In an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Hollander explained that the seven-figure sum was not even the entire bonus—it was just the first one. “It’s been very difficult,” Hollander joked, “because you know I was here first but he’s enormously famous.”

Stat: If you’re a fully functioning human adult and your parents still hand you a 20 whenever you see them, don’t be too embarrassed. Nearly 60% of parents provided financial assistance to their adult children in the past year, according to new research from Pew. Meanwhile, fewer than half of young adults ages 18 to 34 (45%) say they’re financially independent from mom and dad. One University of Pittsburgh economics professor found that 14% of adults receive a money transfer from their parents at least once a year—a figure that has stayed flat for years but is now continuing for longer into adulthood.

Read: Train heists are still a thing, thanks to the e-commerce boom. (New York Times)

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Dust off your microscope: Scientists tied the smallest knot ever using just 54 atoms.

24 ideas for ’24: Learn how to leverage AI, stay ahead of regulations, and automate financial fundamentals with this CFO’s guide.*

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