Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon shares good news about the legacy media.
NBC News is slashing staff this week as the media network enters the final phase of its impending divorce from MSNBC. Former Politico journalist Dylan Byers reported Wednesday that NBC had begun “significant layoffs,” which former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy described as “deep and painful.” It’s another promising development—on the heels of Donald Trump’s historic Middle East peace deal—that weary Americans can embrace to justify their hope for a better future.
The long-anticipated cuts will affect roughly 150 employees, or 8 percent of the NBC News workforce. Most encouragingly, the network eliminated its “teams dedicated to covering issues affecting Black, Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ+ groups,” prompting howls of outrage from diversity fanatics. Variety reports many of these staffers will be “encouraged” to endure the demeaning process of applying for “new roles” at the network that is letting them go. One NBC employee told Darcy last week the mood within the company had soured considerably, with many anxious liberal journalists “dreading what’s to come.”
The layoffs reflect NBC’s need to downsize after cutting ties with CNBC and MSNBC, soon to be rebranded (in humiliating fashion) as MS NOW. All professional collaboration between the long-time sister networks will cease on Oct. 20, which means the NBC newsgathering operation will have a lot less work to do. Several NBC employees have already accepted transfers to MSNBC ahead of the split, including radical partisans such as Jacob Soboroff, Brandy Zadrozny, and Ryan Reilly, the racial justice reporter who thought ear plugs were rubber bullets.
In addition to staff cuts, the exorbitant salaries of NBC’s on-air “talent” will also require downsizing to account for falling revenue across the industry. Lester Holt, who earns an estimated $10 million as host of NBC Nightly News, may soon face a choice between early retirement and a significant pay cut.
