Our thoughts are with the journalists affected by the latest wave of layoffs at news organizations across the country: Gannett, BuzzFeed, HuffPost/Yahoo News/Oath, Dallas Morning News and Mic.
The decisions by these news organizations to slash jobs are a painful reflection of the persistent struggles the journalism industry faces in finding a sustainable business model, and serve as a stark reminder that no local, digital or legacy media outlet is immune to staff cuts. By CNN’s estimate, the media industry lost about 1,000 jobs just this week. These eliminations come as the public’s trust in our news institutions crumbles and perception of media bias soars.
The relentless business challenges news organizations face are a serious crisis — not just to the long-term future of journalism, but also to the ability of newsrooms to train and promote journalists, and spend resources on robust coverage of our communities. This is a direct threat to AAJA’s mission to diversify newsrooms, elevate journalists of color, and ensure fair and accurate coverage of minority communities, particularly Asian American Pacific Islanders.
During this difficult time, AAJA’s Governing Board is activating our organization and wide network of recruiters, hiring managers, mentors, educators and trainers as a resource:
- We will provide open access to AAJA’s Job Board until March 1, 2019. We are making a temporary change to our policy in order to offer this members-only service publicly for a limited time, to help journalists find job postings and connect with recruiters.
- We will tweet out as many job openings that come our way from our Twitter handle, @AAJA, until March 1, 2019. Keep an eye out for the hashtags #mediadiversity, #journalismjobs and #journojobs, where we’ll be sharing openings. This is a temporary change in our social media policy. We encourage our members to retweet and post jobs to Twitter using the hashtags, to spread the word about opportunities.
- We will work with our local chapters, affinity groups and sponsors to provide more resources in the coming months, and will share updates on aaja.org.
We encourage those affected to reach out to our 21 chapters across the U.S. and in Asia and inquire about convention or membership stipends so you can connect with recruiters and our network of journalists.
To our friends, allies, and colleagues who have been affected, we send our sympathies and positive thoughts.
In unity,
Michelle Ye Hee Lee
AAJA President
(Photo Courtesy of AP/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
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