WGN Television has laid off eight veteran members of its news staff. Crain’s Chicago Business reports:
Eight reporters and anchors were laid off Monday at WGN-Ch. 9, the latest round of cuts at the Chicago television station owned by Dallas-based Nexstar Media Group, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Among those let go was weekend morning anchor Sean Lewis, a nearly 20-year veteran of the station. Lewis said he was informed of his dismissal Monday afternoon after filing what became his final report for the noon broadcast.
The layoffs follow additional reductions in recent months, including six newswriters and three technical directors last month and four floor directors in October, according to newsroom sources cited by the Tribune.
Nexstar declined to comment on specific personnel matters but said in a statement it is “taking steps necessary to compete effectively in this period of unprecedented change.”
I’m sad to see this move. It’s another step in the decline of local news coverage.
As I’ve mentioned before my wife and I frequently watch WGN’s evening news coverage. That was particularly true during the nightly “Dolton follies” which I posted on. WGN’s regular reporting on the political and governmental problems in Dolton was instrumental in mobilizing that town to reform itself. That’s something that only local news coverage will do.
Some of our favorite WGN personalities have been laid off. I’d like to know more about this story but we’re even less likely to learn more about it now than we were a week ago.
This is a bigger deal than many would assume as it is happening nationally. We are losing real news outlets covering local news. They are being replaced with news outlets that claim to be local news outfits but are really partisan fronts devoted to delivering information with a bias they prefer. This has been called pink slime journalism and unfortunately a lot of it has good aesthetics and genuine sounding names so they get accepted as real news organizations. Emily Horne has a piece about how this worked recently.
https://spinclass.substack.com/p/spin-class-case-study-i-caught-politico?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Steve
Furthermore, taking wire service stories and re-writing them is not reporting. Neither is inserting features from AP Television News or Reuters Video into your broadcasts.