On March 9, 47 journalists at the award-winning news site HuffPost were suddenly laid off after the site was bought by BuzzFeed. One staffer described it as “a bloodbath” and “worse than the worst-case scenario.”
It’s just the latest gut punch to a journalism industry battered by existential crises on multiple fronts.
Here at The Intercept, we’re not immune to the financial pressures that are affecting the entire news industry. And to keep The Intercept strong over the long haul, we set ambitious goals for growing the number of readers who donate to support our journalism.
But since Donald Trump left office, new donations to The Intercept are down more than 50 percent, and that’s a problem.
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Many of the reporters who lost their jobs at HuffPost had a decade or more of experience. These were talented journalists and colleagues whose work we know and respect. Unfortunately, their story is all too common, as newspapers, magazines, and broadcast news have all been hammered by waves of corporate consolidation and downsizing.
Now, after four years of hair-on-fire crisis under Trump, traffic on news websites is declining across the board, and cable new ratings have fallen by as much as one-third. Nonprofit news organizations like The Intercept are facing their own unique challenge, as the same cultural trends driving down ratings are also causing a decline in donations.
Here at The Intercept, that has translated into a 60 percent decline in new donors compared to 2020.
But the need for investigative journalism hasn’t gone anywhere, even as more and more newsrooms are gutted by layoffs. The daily dumpster fire spectacle of Trump’s White House has ended, but Trump didn’t invent systemic racism or government corruption, and we must continue to root out abuses and hold the powerful to account.
