McClatchy Guts Newsrooms Nationwide Months After Controversial Push to AI

McClatchy Media hit its newsrooms nationwide with significant layoffs on Thursday, with some newspapers gutted by a third of their staff.

The layoffs came just months after the company’s push into AI with a controversial editorial tool that led to widespread revolt among staffers, as previously reported by Topcitytune Media.

The 168-year-old newspaper owner houses Pulitzer Prize-winning local outlets like the Bee, the Miami Herald and the Charlotte Observer, among many others. In an internal memo to staff first shared publicly by the New York Times’ Katie Robertson, management said that an internal analysis found that consumer revenue declined 41% while local news expenses remained flat.

“These are difficult decisions because they affect talented people who have contributed meaningfully to McClatchy, our journalism and the communities we serve. We are grateful for their work and the impact they have made,” the memo read.

“We are making these changes because the status quo no longer works,” the statement added. “We cannot continue investing where subscriber interest does not support the investment. We need to listen to our subscribers, make choices and focus resources to create the greatest value.”

The California-based company has yet to make a public announcement of the cuts as of Thursday afternoon. More than 90 journalists were affected, according to estimates by unions representing a number of their papers, noting substantial cuts across McClatchy publications in Miami; Kansas City; Lexington, Kentucky and across the Pacific Northwest. At least 13 papers in eight states lost staff.

These cuts come after several reporters rioted against McClatchy’s development of an AI editorial tool earlier this year. More than 30 staffers from the Sacramento Bee claimed they would withhold their bylines from stories created by their parent company McClatchy’s “content scaling agent,” a generative AI product that produces new pieces using the reporters’ existing work.

The “content scaling agent,” which the Bee’s Ariane Lange, an investigative reporter and the vice chair of its union, said was promoted by management as a way to boost the outlet’s traffic and productivity, allowed editors to produce repurposed versions of previous work under new headlines.

The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild said Thursday it was “shocked and disappointed” by McClatchy’s decision to lay off 33% of the unionized workers at Idaho Statesman, The News Tribune (Tacoma), Tri-City Herald, The Olympian and Bellingham Herald, which includes 10 journalists in Idaho and seven across Washington.

Carol Marbin Miller, the deputy investigations editor at The Miami Herald, shared that McClatchy “wrote off more than 30 positions” at the Florida-based paper, “well over one-third of its editorial staff.” She noted that the cuts included several “crucial accountability beats.”

“Miami is on the precipice of becoming a news desert – whether the Herald survives these cuts or not,” Miller wrote on X. “Consider this a plea: If you care about good governance, about ensuring your leaders keep their promises, about the welfare of your neighbors and friends – it’s past the time for Miami’s civic leaders to begin serious, earnest discussions about the future of journalism.”

The Charlotte Observer reported that they laid off eight employees about one fourth of its newsroom. Journalists at several newspapers in Idaho, including the Idaho Statesman, and Washington were laid off.

“This is one of the bleakest media layoff memos I’ve seen in 12 years covering the industry,” New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin wrote on X.

NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss called out McClatchy for its reasoning behind the layoffs on Thursday, arguing that the 41% decline in consumer revenue “needs to be verified.”

“McClatchy execs decided to push AI slop on news sites,” Schleuss wrote on X. “You can’t pivot to AI, cut 40% of your local journalists and write ‘we remain deeply committed to local journalism.’ You’re lying.”

Representatives for McClatchy did not respond to Topcitytune Media’s request for comment.