The Chicago Tribune is the latest newspaper to cut jobs, with the paper laying off eight employees on Thursday, or about 10% of its newsroom staff.
The Tribune Guild said the cuts “underscore a sad but unsurprising failure of leadership by Alden Global Capital, our hedge fund owner and local management.” Alden acquired the paper when it paid $630 million for Tribune Publishing in 2021.
Five of the Chicago Tribune reporters who were laid off were guild members. Those staffers, per Chicagobusiness.com, were: Bears reporter Sean Hammond, general assignment reporter Shanzeh Ahmad, photo editor Pinar Istek, food writer Ahmed Ali Akbar, and business reporter Lizzie Kane.
Thursday’s cuts come after the paper offered buyouts to reporters last month, but only one writer, veteran political reporter Ray Long, accepted the deal.
Job cuts in the media world have seemingly been a daily story in 2025. On Thursday, Gannett Media, the the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, started offering employees voluntary buyout packages in an effort to cut costs, as the media company’s annual sales have dropped from from $3.21 billion in 2021 to $2.51 billion in 2024.
And earlier this week, Fortune said it was cutting 10% of its staff. Those layoffs, coupled with the Chicago Tribune’s layoffs, added to a growing list of media companies that have been hit by cuts. IndieWire, Forbes, Vox, The Washington Post, Scripps and the Huffington Post are just some of the outlets that have laid off employees in 2025, as well as Bloomberg News, which cut some staffers earlier this month.
As TheWrap reported previously, media job cuts have accelerated in recent years. There were 7,735 jobs cut between 2021 and 2022, followed by a 368% increase to 36,206 jobs cut between 2023-24. That trend does not look to have slowed down in 2025.
