Media job cuts hit 15,000 last year, and 2025 won’t reverse the trend

The news: Media companies are continuing aggressive cost-cutting efforts in 2025, with The Washington Post laying off 4% of its workforce after losing $100 million in 2024, while Vox Media and HuffPost have implemented significant staff reductions.

Industry impact: Traditional media faces mounting pressures, illustrated by challenges at The Post:

• The paper’s subscriber count dropped by 250,000 after it declined to endorse a presidential candidate.
• Financial losses escalated in 2024 after reaching $77 million in 2023.
• Diversification efforts have faltered, compared with The New York Times' growth into new markets with acquisitions of The Athletic and Wordle.

Other publishers show similar strain:

• HuffPost has cut 22% of its workforce, affecting about 30 positions.
• Vox Media continues reducing staff across properties including Thrillist, Eater, and Pop Sugar.
• Nearly 15,000 media jobs were eliminated in 2024 alone, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas data.

Why it matters: The layoffs reflect cyclical and structural challenges faced by publishers.

• A post-Trump decline in political news engagement has shrunk the subscriber base and revenues for many outlets.
• Advertising revenues face pressure from ad tech policy changes and brand safety concerns.
• Even as newsrooms have downsized, content production costs continue rising amid economic uncertainty.

In response, many publishers are exploring revenue diversification:

• Vox Media is emphasizing events and intellectual property development, including a presence at this year’s SXSW festival.
• Traditional ad and subscription models are proving less reliable to sustain news organizations.
• Successful pivots require significant investment during challenging times, a difficult task.

Our take: While some cutbacks reflect cyclical pressures, the depth and breadth of media layoffs suggest core challenges that require structural industry changes.

• We forecast that US print newspaper ad spending will decline 13% this year and will experience double-digit declines for the following three years as well.
• US digital newspaper ad spending will grow this year—but a paltry 1.3% is not enough to offset print’s declines.
• Non-newspapers are being commoditized as well. Though most people support AI training compensation for news publishers, not all publications have secured such payments.

Though advertisers say that supporting news organizations with ad dollars is important to many advertisers (see chart), news and media outlets can’t rest of their laurels and count on that support. Instead, they must rein in costs, strategically innovate, and diversify revenue streams to find a sustainable path forward.