What's at stake:
Some of the Bee's best reporters were laid off as the parent company pushes AI bots to write more news.
The Fresno Bee laid off up to 40% of its workforce today as part of a nationwide sweep of papers in the McClatchy Media Company. The Bee’s labor union lead worries the cuts are part of a push to have AI write Fresno’s news.
Seven reporters and one editor were laid off Thursday, according to Josh Tehee, a Bee reporter and co-chair of the Bee News Guild.
“We are losing positions that I do not think will be replaced within the news landscape,” said Tehee. “This is a loss for the entire city.
“It’s not quite half the newsroom, but it’s a substantial amount. It’s maybe around 30-40%.”
Among those laid off, according to GVWire, was the Bee’s Melissa Montalvo, whose groundbreaking investigation into the death of a man at Mary’s Chicken in Sanger triggered a state investigation.
Fresno Bee Editor Christopher Kirkpatrick did not respond to a request for comment on what The Bee’s future looks like.
Layoffs for reporters were announced nationwide across McClatchy, which is owned by a hedge fund called Chatham Asset Management.
McClatchy’s Miami Herald — the paper who broke the Jeffrey Epstein story which led to his arrest in 2019 — announced layoffs today too. Around 30% cuts were also announced at McClatchy papers in Idaho and Washington, with even more in Kentucky, South Carolina, Kansas City, and Charlotte, among others.
Tehee said The Fresno Bee is down to roughly a dozen staff members to cover California’s fifth largest city and a county larger than six states.
The New York Times reported in May that McClatchy was experimenting with AI to “spit out” articles.
In April, more than 30 staffers at The Sacramento Bee, which is also operated by McClatchy, refused to put their names on stories written by McClatchy’s new “content scaling agent.”
McClatchy started rolling out the AI bots in March, according to the Wrap, which “allows Bee editors to produce summarized and repurposed versions of its reporters’ work under new headlines.”
That same month, ProPublica’s union voted to go on strike if the company didn’t agree to ban AI-related layoffs.
Tehee said the AI content scaling bot has been pushed into the Fresno office too.
“This round of layoffs come after they have been pushing these AI tools,” said Tehee. “That is definitely a concern.”
