Gannett has ‘laid off around 400 employees’

News in brief

Gannett has laid off around 3% of its workforce—roughly 400 employees—and has cut an additional 400 job openings, according to a report by Poynter.

The mass media company, which owns USA Today and several local newspapers across the country, reportedly began laying off employees across its portfolio in mid-August, but did not disclose details to staff until this week.

Poynter independently found at least 68 impacted newsrooms, including USA Today.

In its Q2 earnings, the company reported a 56.1% year-over-year decline in adjusted Ebitda (the company’s measure of profit) and a 6.9% year-over-year decrease in total revenues.

A recent report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism showed that since 2019, the US has been losing newspapers at a rate of two per week, with local newspapers being hit particularly hard.

Medill highlighted that the largest news chains that control many of the country’s surviving newspapers, including Gannett, are continuing to close or divest, rather than invest in, underperformers.