Yahoo News and Yahoo Sports lost a number of staffers over the past week as part of the company’s overall goal to slash its workforce 20% by 2024. It also shuttered the Gen Z-centric In the Know video platform.
Yahoo Entertainment was also hit hard: Longtime music editor Lyndsey Parker tweeted on Wednesday that she is “devastated” to be among those laid off. Film and TV writer Ethan Alter, who just won Journalist of the Year at the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards on Sunday was also cut, according to a source at Yahoo, who asked to remain anonymous. They confirmed to TheWrap that managing editor Chrissy Nguyen, senior correspondent Kevin Polowy and reporter Raechal Shewfelt were also laid off.
“We have ambitious plans for Yahoo in 2024 and beyond. As we work to elevate our category-leading properties to better serve customers, we need the right structure, talent and roles in place,” Sona Iliffe-Moon, a spokesperson for the Bay Area-based tech company, told The San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday.
She added that the company is “transitioning roles that no longer align with our business needs.”
“We’ve made the difficult decision to make changes in several areas of the U.S. editorial team, which means we must part ways with some colleagues,” general manager Kat Downs Mulder wrote in an internal memo obtained by The Daily Beast.
Mulder said the decisions were “not made to cut costs, but to realign our resources and efforts to achieve our strategy [of] making Yahoo News the best place to go to find out what’s going on in the world and get things done.”
Yahoo News senior writer Ben Adler was among those who confirmed their layoffs on social media, as did Yahoo Sports writer Zach Crizer, who wrote on X, “Well, my time at Yahoo Sports is up. New management slashed my job — along with a bunch of other talented people’s….”
The layoff announcements were staggered over a few days, with some reporting they were laid off on Friday and others on Tuesday.
Kelsey Weekman, a writer for In the Know, lamented, “If I had a nickel for every time in 2023 the website i was working for got shut down, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right.” She was previously employed at BuzzFeed News, which was shut down in April.
Weekman added, “I’ll have a job elsewhere in the company, but I am devastated at the loss of so many more media jobs and of a GOOD WEBSITE.”
Mark Chrysafis, a freelance video producer for In the Know, posted on LinkedIn, “I’ve unfortunately been affected by layoffs.” He shared fond memories of “covering New York Comic-Con, reviewing toys and making videos about the coolest trends from all corners of the internet.”
Yahoo News did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
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