Journalists Jobs Are Disappearing. Why?

 January 12, 2025- Sunday 

I read an article this morning written by Robert McGreevey of the Daily Caller.  The article was entitled “Journalists Getting Axed Left and Right at Several Major Outlets”.  Because I am so interested in what is happening in the media industry I was drawn by the title to the article and what I might find.  This shows how important a good title can be so don’t ever take lightly a good, well thought out title. 

The focus of the article was described in the title, but it gave a little more definition to a topic that has been talked about in the media for the last couple of months if not the last few years in some form.  Media organization such as the Washington Post, The New York Time, The Huffington Post, and Vox Media are laying off journalists at a high rate.  Readership is down which for these organizations means influence is down.  The industry is beginning to face the reality of their choices over the last several decades and it is costing people their jobs.  

Why has this happened and why is it happening?  The last presidential election showed the biased reporting of these organizations did not effectively impact the election in their favor.  As a matter of fact, it shined a light on these organizations political and social philosophies and how many Americans have stopped tolerating the skewed message they were selling.  These journalists and the organizations they have worked for are finding their imbalance toward social issues and not reporting the facts of issues is now costing them their jobs. 

I know many of these people who chose journalism as their profession chose it so they could change the world, not report on the world.  Their publicly stated goals or the secret goals were to promote social issues that would be defined as liberal. I refuse to use the word “progressive” because I don’t see the promotion of those liberal ideas as progressive but regressive.  It is reporting on the fringe and pathological of society that has now led to the loss of jobs and influence.  

People reading the bias finally got tired of it.  People started finding other information outlets that would provide either more balanced information that truly showed both sides of an issue and let them decide what was the best view in their worldview or provided information to them that was logical and made practical sense.  Those organizations have grown.   

Now the leftist media organizations are looking for a way to financially survive in a world that has walked away from their liberally leaning ideas and gone to podcasts and other online means of reporting.  As much as the journalists who have lost their jobs want to admit it, the organizations must make money to exist.  I know that sends shivers down the spines of these journalists who set out to change the world, but the reality is you must have money to stay in business. 

In one interview, Lester Holt of NBC News answered a question about why NBC News did not work harder to report both sides of an issue.  His response was that they didn’t have to report both sides of an issues, they just had to report the truth.  It was a grandiose and arrogant answer to an obvious issue in mass media. Many of the issues of our time and the subjects these news organizations choose to report, do have two sides and options do exist.  The liberal leaning authors or purveyors of the reporting want their side of the issue to be the absolute truth so that’s what they report to the exclusion of the whole issue.  People want information and then they want to decide for themselves their views of the subject.  If you try to shove a view down the throats of people, they will walk away.  If you don’t believe me, check the viewship numbers for the evening major newscasts.   

Lester Holt’s philosophy of news is what is killing journalism today. There is now a critical mass of people who have stepped away and aren’t buying the manipulation of the world events and opinions done in an attempt to get people to believe something they know is not totally true in their world.   

Now journalists are in the unemployment ranks.  I don’t wish anyone who wants to work to be unemployed.  My question for those individuals is a simple one.  Can you change your approach to your profession like you have so passionately tried to get other people to change their opinions to your point of view? If they want to survive and be able to pay the bills as a journalist, I think they will need to find a balance in their lives and in their writing or reporting.  Otherwise, they will need to find another way to pay the bills outside of the world of journalism and start a blog to continue their attempts to change the world.   

Many of us will no longer tolerate their bias to the exclusion of the whole story.