Journalism cuts keep coming: what to do if you're affected

Press Gazette runs an ongoing tracker of journalism job cuts, and the latest entries include losses at Reach, Forbes and McClatchy. This isn't a one-off story — it's a running log of an industry that has been shrinking in waves for years, driven by falling ad revenue, changing reader habits, and newsrooms restructuring around digital-first and, increasingly, AI-assisted workflows.

What this means if you work in media

If your outlet hasn't been named yet, that doesn't mean it won't be. Repeated rounds of cuts across the industry mean it's sensible to treat your CV and LinkedIn profile as things you keep current, not things you dust off in a panic once notice lands. It also means the competition for the roles that remain is likely to include a lot of experienced people moving sideways, not just entry-level candidates.

The other shift worth noting is what

newsrooms are hiring for now. Cuts often fall hardest on traditional reporting and sub-editing roles, while demand holds up better for people who can do audience growth, data journalism, video, or editorial roles that double up with product or SEO work. That's not a judgement on which skills matter more — it's just where the jobs currently sit.

What to actually do about it

• Widen your search early. Trade press, corporate communications, in-house content teams and PR agencies all value journalism training — reporting, interviewing, writing to deadline — even if the job title doesn't say 'journalist'.
• Translate your skills for a non-media reader. A hiring manager outside journalism won't automatically know what 'subbing' or 'patch reporting' involved. Spell out what you actually did: interviewing sources, verifying facts under time pressure, managing a daily output.
• Quantify where you can. Page views, audience growth, number of stories filed per week, awards or bylines that got picked up elsewhere — these translate well to any employer assessing output and reliability.
• Don't wait for redundancy to update your CV. If your organisation has already made cuts once, a second round is not unthinkable. Having an up-to-date CV ready costs you nothing and saves you time later.

None of this is really about journalism specifically — it's the same advice that applies whenever an industry contracts: keep your options broader than your job title, and make sure your CV explains your value to someone who's never worked in your world.

If you're moving from a journalism role into something adjacent, FixMyCV can help tailor your CV to the new job description — translating your actual experience into language the next employer is looking for, without inventing anything that isn't there.

Source: Press Gazette. FixMyCV summarises and comments; we never reproduce articles.