NBC News Layoffs a sobering reminder people like me Have the Ricketiest Seats at the Media table

Corbin Bolies reported sobering news for The Wrap earlier this week that NBC News has decided to gut its newsroom’s bespoke diversity coverage teams. He writes the move is part of recent layoffs, which sees the Peacock network say goodbye to 150 personnel.

The cuts comprise 7% of a newsroom of “about 2,000 staffers,” according to Bolies.

“The cuts mean that the verticals NBC BLK, NBC Asian America, NBC Latino and NBC OUT will no longer have dedicated teams bolstering their coverage,” Bolies wrote on Wednesday. “The verticals will continue to publish stories related to the specific groups and NBC News may ultimately retain up to five staffers who will contribute coverage on the verticals to the newsroom, according to one source, as the dedicated teams focused exclusively on these verticals are sunset.”

The latest layoffs, which Bolies reported a source said was described by NBC News’ executive vice president of editorial, Catherine Kim, as “a difficult day for a lot of us,” were announced during a brief morning meeting conducted earlier this week.

While Bolies notes NBC News may retain a small number of people to write stories about underrepresented groups, I found the move distressing and unsurprising. If you know me on LinkedIn, you may know I occasionally post these “Hire Steven” missives in which I stand on my proverbial soapbox and tell anyone who’ll listen that I’m open to a staff role someplace. The thrust of my pitch is simple: I like to think I’m a damn good journalist… I know how to write well, and my lived experiences as a lifelong disabled person (coping with multiple conditions at that) gives my work instant credibility. The larger argument, of course, is how, in my 12 years in the tech media racket, earnest disability coverage is woefully inadequate. Too often, accessibility coverage is relegated to weeks and days, and oftentimes what accessibility stories that are published are cobbled together by well-meaning yet able-bodied writers who aren’t intimately familiar with the topic. For my part, I’ve dedicated my career to making marginalized people like me more seen, but my reach goes only so far as an independent journalist. There are definite perks to being indie, but there surely are perks to being part of a newsroom of an established outlet. I’ve been doing this a long time, and walking this beat is a damn lonely road. What’s more, I’d like to make more money and, frankly, explore what other challenges/opportunities may be out there.

I’ve applied to innumerable staff writer jobs over the last few years to no avail. I even had a prominent editor at a very large and well-known newspaper tell me once during an interview disability inclusion in tech is “way too niche” for their readership. I found the comment galling and dispiriting, let alone shortsighted and borderline ableist. Anyway, the salient point of this piece is not to bemoan my own job prospects, but to use my experiences as an illustration that, to a point Bolies made in his story, DEI initiatives are part of the journalism world’s “larger retreat” from such efforts. Again, as a marginalized person owning a marginalized beat, it can be difficult sometimes to keep pushing forward with my work not because I’m disinterested—on the contrary, I love being in journalism—but because (a) it’s becoming evermore abundantly clear people like me live at the margin’s margin; and (b) I increasingly feel like my byline hurdles itself into a black hole, swallowed up by ostensibly more pressing, more “glitzy” stories.

Like I said, it’s fucking lonely job—and a sentiment I’ve espoused before.

So much is made about gender, race, and sexuality. June is Pride Month, and every news station makes hay over it—yet July is Disability Pride Month and there is nary a peep about it. Never mind the intersectionality between, say, gay people and disabled people, but it’s as though society likes to pretend the disabled community doesn’t exist. But we do, and I’m exhausted from always trying to Oliver Twist my way through the industry and essentially justifying my existence to all the editorial powers-that-be.