Local news is a hard business — the Black press knows that as well as anyone. But if hard times turn you into a hard person, you’re not the right leader to guide a newsroom through this storm.
At WAMU last week, general manager Erika Pulley-Hayes and other WAMU executives chose abruptness over empathy and self-protection over service as they shuttered the digital news site DCist, which the radio station had acquired in 2018. In that process, they were disingenuous and unkind about how they informed staff members about a wave of layoffs.
Pulley-Hayes and other members of management broke the news to another outlet, Axios DC, before telling their own team; several staffers later told a reporter at Washingtonian that they learned about the coming layoffs from the Axios story, which was published just ahead of a mandatory all-staff Zoom meeting. That call lasted just under 7 minutes, per Washington City Paper, and Pulley-Hayes took no questions following the announcement.
Since then, WAMU has also put out a self-congratulatory press release about its “new strategy” to “lean into audio” and “deepen engagement.” It does not mention cutting 15 team members — including several reporters known for innovative audio reporting.
A lot of national news outlets have laid off staff in recent months, and many of them have exhibited the same lack of compassion and forethought. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
Staffers at the Nevada Independent faced layoffs last week, too. Their CEO, Jon Ralston, told the public about it in a post on the Independent’s website. Instead of a fluffy press release and an exclusive interview to another outlet, he took responsibility. Most importantly, he noted that remaining staff would share the burden with temporary pay cuts, and Ralston himself would “not be taking a salary indefinitely.”
“There isn’t a person at this organization I haven’t enjoyed working with, and I am truly sorry for the hardship I have caused,” his letter reads. “I will miss all of them, I will help them where I can, I hate to have had to do this.”
The local news business is hard, and it will likely get worse before it gets better. The stakes — for communities, for democracy and for accountability — are incredibly high. None of that is an excuse for forgetting that newsrooms are made of human beings.