Over 500 journalists were laid off in January 2024 alone

And, less than a year after it launched, The Messenger shut down “effective immediately” on Wednesday, leaving its journalists without a job. (Numbers from The Messenger’s layoffs were not included in the 538 job cuts reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.)

Throughout the month, journalists’ timelines on X, formerly known as Twitter, were filled with posts from fellow journalists who had been laid off by their employers and were unsure of what their next job would be.

Tim Franklin, senior associate dean at Northwestern’s Medill journalism school called the January layoffs “breathtaking.”

But Gabriel Kahn, a professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said layoffs can and do occur throughout the whole year in large numbers.

The LA Times cut more than 70 positions in June and The Washington Post eliminated 240 jobs through a voluntary separation package in October.

“We saw a concentration of announcements, but I don’t think it’s a different story than what we’ve been seeing for more than a decade now,” Khan said. “The only business plan seems to be to cut and only a few places have really been able to build on something new and different.”

The layoffs also come during an election year, triggering worry over how outlets can sustain robust political coverage. The LA Times cuts are “gutting our Washington bureau in an election year,” union Chair Brian Contreras said in a statement.

“What concerns me is with all of these losses and this loss of coverage is that it’s only going to fuel more misinformation and disinformation into communities,” Franklin said. “How do you then combat that challenge?”

The eliminations at the LA Times will have “devastating” implications for the publication’s journalists of color if the layoffs go as expected, according to the newsroom’s Latino, Black, Asian American Pacific Islander and Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian caucuses.

“A lot of the diverse staff members who’ve been hired in recent years have borne the brunt of these recent rounds of layoffs,” Franklin said. “And news organizations need more diverse coverage, they need to engage with diverse audiences. This could inhibit their ability to do that, which I think is also a big concern.”

While there is no silver bullet solution to transform the business model across the journalism industry to prevent layoffs, Franklin pointed to many news organizations that have local ownership or reader-revenue-based models that have seen some success, such as The Boston Globe, The Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Seattle Times.

“Part of the issue is that the landscape is changing so rapidly, that the news organizations are trying to change the wheels on the plane as it’s flying, which is also a challenge,” Franklin said.