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Crosscurrents

How will the latest Bay Area newspaper layoffs affect you?

CC Flickr User Steve Rhodes, resized and recropped

 

More than two dozen journalists and support staff at the East Bay Times and San Jose Mercury News are out of work this week.

It's part of a bigger picture that is broadly affecting how people in the U.S. get information. The buyouts and layoffs are part of the latest downsizing by the Bay Area News Group. It's a media company run by Digital First Media, which is run byAlden Global Capital.

 

That's important because Alden is a hedge fund company that invests in and makes money from struggling businesses. Many journalists are worried the latest cuts are part of a broad strategy to make a lot money on as little investment as possible, until the media outlets are all but gone.

 

KALW's Ben Trefny reached Jon Funabiki, professor of journalism at San Francisco State University and executive director of Renaissance Journalism, to talk about what's happening.

 

 

"Even with these cutbacks, the Bay Area News Group says they have 150 journalists in the Bay Area and they will still be able to cover the news. But just a decade ago the San Jose Mercury all by itself had 400 reporters and photographers. That's a huge drop."

Note: KALW is collaborator with Renaissance Journalism to tell stories of social justice.

 

 

Click the audio player above to listen to the full story. 

Crosscurrents