Indy Digest: June 8, 2023
I love journalism, and I think there’s potential for journalism to have a bright future in this country. I really do.
But, jeez, I have to admit there are days when I start second-guessing my optimism.
First off comes this news from yesterday, via the Los Angeles Times:
The Los Angeles Times is cutting its newsroom staff, becoming the latest news organization to contract amid economic pressures brought on by advertising and print readership declines.
The Times is eliminating 74 positions in the newsroom, representing about 13% of the total.
Full-time and temporary workers will be let go, including a handful of managers. Reporting positions are expected to be largely spared but the production staff will be scaled back. Nearly a third of the cuts come from news and copy editor ranks. Some photographers, audience engagement editors and audio producers will also be affected.
Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida announced the layoffs Wednesday in a note to the newsroom, saying the decision was “made more urgent by the economic climate and the unique challenges of our industry.”
I’ll admit this particular layoffs announcement caught me by surprise. As the story says later: “The restructuring represents the first significant belt tightening since Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and his wife, Michele, acquired the paper five years ago from Tribune Publishing. … When the Soon-Shiong family purchased the paper, The Times was shedding print subscribers and had just 125,000 digital subscribers. The family invested millions of dollars to help the organization recover from more than a decade of devastating cost-cutting, management missteps and a flight of journalistic talent under Tribune. Under Soon-Shiong, the newsroom added more than 150 journalists, rebuilt its business operations and launched an entertainment studio. The paper was making strong gains in revenue by early 2020. But the COVID-19 health crisis derailed the paper’s path to profitability as pandemic-related closures obliterated the paper’s advertising.”
There are good newspaper owners, like the Soon-Shiong family, and then there are not-so-good owners, like Gannett, the parent company of The Desert Sun. And if you’ve been reading The Desert Sun this week, you’ve noticed things are decidedly amiss.
We reported last week in this space that The Desert Sun NewsGuild would be participating in a strike on Monday (June 5) to express their lack of confidence in Gannett CEO Mike Reed. On Monday, the NewsGuild announced that they’d actually be striking for five days, to protest the fact that they still don’t have a contact in place. In the days since, the striking reporters have been holding rallies and occasionally posting stories—which normally would have been in The Desert Sun—on their union website.
Meanwhile, The Desert Sun has kept copy flowing by using freelancers, pieces written by staffers elsewhere within Gannett, and articles staffers had written before the strike.
The resulting coverage mix has been … odd, even including a photo from a Coachella Valley Firebirds game taken by the editor of The Arizona Republic (who was formerly the editor of The Desert Sun).
As for today’s edition of The Desert Sun, the union pointed out in a series of tweets:
It’s a weird and disconcerting time for journalism—especially here in Southern California.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
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More News
• An inevitable consequence of the Los Angeles Times layoffs will be fewer important stories like this one published today, headlined “As Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s power grew, so did his wife’s income.” A snippet: “When California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) steps down from his powerful post at the end of the month, he’ll leave behind a legacy as one of the state’s longest-serving legislative leaders, having helped Democrats secure stronger labor protections for gig workers, launch universal preschool and extend a marquee program to combat climate change during his seven-year tenure. Off the Assembly floor, Rendon is also one-half of a political power couple that includes Annie Lam, a successful consultant and nonprofit executive who’s dedicated her career to diversifying California politics and other institutions of power. … As Rendon’s influence grew, financial and lobbying disclosures show that Lam’s consultancy business similarly boomed. Over the years Rendon served as speaker, Lam has founded a nonprofit, taken on several new clients and became the executive director of six total organizations, work that allowed her income to swell and public profile to soar.”
• Gov. Gavin Newsom today called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to enact gun control. Our partners at CalMatters report: “Today the governor, who has become one of the country’s most outspoken advocates for tighter gun laws, proposed adding a 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution to place new age limits, background check requirements and mandatory waiting periods for gun purchasers. His proposed amendment would also ban the civilian ownership of so-called assault weapons. Most of these proposals come from California’s own lengthy list of gun laws. They’re popular here. But though Congress has yet to pass them, most public polling suggests they’re broadly popular ideas across the country.”
• Related and interesting, from The Hill: “California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) will sit with Fox News host Sean Hannity for an interview that will air next week, the network said Thursday. The interview, which will mark the Democrat’s first on the conservative cable news channel in more than a decade, will take place at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento on June 12, and ‘encompass topics such as immigration, current issues in California, the economy, the 2024 presidential election,’ Fox News said. … Like many elected Democrats, Newsom has railed against Fox News for years, in one recent interview calling the channel’s popular prime-time lineup of opinion shows ‘a disgrace.’”
• Meanwhile, for another view of the country post-Roe v. Wade, we head to Kansas. Reuters reports: “Planned Parenthood on Tuesday sued to block a new Kansas law requiring healthcare providers to tell patients that medication abortion can be reversed, a potentially dangerous claim not supported by evidence. The lawsuit in the District Court of Johnson County, filed against state and local authorities on behalf of a group of doctors, also challenges older mandates requiring providers to warn patients that abortion is linked to breast cancer, and to wait at last 30 minutes after meeting with a patient to perform an abortion. Reviews of evidence by the U.S. National Cancer Institute have concluded that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer.”
• In other depressing news, ProPublica reports: “Climate Crisis Is on Track to Push One-Third of Humanity Out of Its Most Livable Environment.” The lede: “Climate change is remapping where humans can exist on the planet. As optimum conditions shift away from the equator and toward the poles, more than 600 million people have already been stranded outside of a crucial environmental niche that scientists say best supports life. By late this century, according to a study published last month in the journal Nature Sustainability, 3 to 6 billion people, or between a third and a half of humanity, could be trapped outside of that zone, facing extreme heat, food scarcity and higher death rates, unless emissions are sharply curtailed or mass migration is accommodated.”
• The IRS erroneously sent payment notices to some Californians. The San Francisco Chronicle (subscription required) explains: “In the wake of deadly winter storms, the Internal Revenue Service gave virtually all Californians until Oct. 16 to file their 2022 tax returns and pay any amount due—but has now apologized after erroneously notifying many who already filed their 2022 federal tax returns with a sum owed that they must pay the outstanding balance by late June or face penalties. Deborah Hill of Oakland filed her return with the IRS on April 16 but hasn’t yet paid the balance. On Monday, she received a CP14 notice from the IRS for the taxes owed and a due date of June 26.”
• And finally … let’s end with some good news, via NPR: “Any iPhone user with their autocorrect function turned on knows that a certain four-letter expletive will be replaced immediately by the rhyming name of a species of waterfowl—but not for much longer. Apple’s upcoming iOS 17 iPhone software will stop autocorrecting swear words, thanks to new machine learning technology, the company announced at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. ‘In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too,’ said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering.” Hallelujah!
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