Laura Bassett: After Verizon Media Group Layoffs “Enough is Enough”

After Verizon Media Group laid off approximately 800 employees, including newsrooms like HuffPost, AOL and Yahoo at the beginning of 2019, the company recently announced it will lay off another round of employees, leaving 150 staffers without jobs right in time for the holiday season. As Google, Apple and Facebook continue to stomp out the competition and siphon off newsrooms’ digital ad revenue, outlets under Verizon’s control suffer as their newsrooms shrink, leaving the journalists to face an uncertain future, and big tech wins again.

If you were affected by these layoffs, we have provided a list of resources during these uncertain times.

The following is a statement from Laura Bassett, former Senior Politics Reporter for HuffPost who was laid off in January and co-founder of the Save Journalism Project, regarding the industry’s losses: 

“One year ago, my life took a sharp turn when I was unexpectedly laid off from the news site that had employed me for nearly ten years. I had just a few hours to say goodbye to the newsroom and no idea where my next paycheck would come from.  I understand the very real changes 150 journalists and staff at Verizon media will undergo- I had to face them when I walked out of the newsroom that last time. 

When can we say to Big Tech: ‘enough is enough’. Google, Apple and Facebook should not be able to control so much, our jobs, the news industry, nor the sustainability of our Democracy.  Without these journalists, without the journalism industry, it is impossible to know where our future lies.”