CNN’s dire prognosis revealed by veteran reporter as network announces mass layoffs

A senior CNN staffer has weighed in on the recent round of layoffs that will affect 200 of the network’s employees.

Brian Stelter, the network’s chief media analyst, framed the firings as being part of a greater ‘revolution.’ He made the remark on X Thursday, as the station aired plans to move toward a more digital future.

Stelter, laid off during a wave of firings in 2022 but since brought back, said he suspected such a fate for journalists as early as a decade ago.

Then the network’s chief media correspondent, he saw cuts and digital additions already being introduced back then as ‘an ongoing “reshaping”‘ process ‘in response to changing consumer habits’. 

However, the linear cuts and digital phenomenon seen now are ‘much more intense’, he claimed – more akin to ‘a revolution.’

‘News executives,’ he continued, ‘[are] looking at cord-cutting declines, traffic trends and other dire data points. [They] believe it’s not just an adapt-or-lose moment, it’s adapt-or-die.’

Along with that diagnosis, Stelter shared a link to his reporting on the latest round of firings at the Warner Discovery-owned channel. 

The report saw Stelter quote a former colleague in Chris Cillizza, who also was fired by then-CEO Chris Licht in late 2022.

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He framed the firings as being part of a greater ‘revolution.’ The former Reliable Sources host made the remark on X Thursday, as the station seeks to move to a more digital future

‘The simple fact is that the slow decline of mainstream media is no longer slow,’ Cillizza – one of CNN’s political commentators for more than five years – recently wrote on his Substack.

‘It is rapidly accelerating as the existing business model, which was already problematic, is further eroded by the rise of news influencers on alternative media platforms.’

Cillizza, posting on New Year’s Day, proceeded to point to a survey of US adults conducted last year that showed how 40 percent of adults under 30 currently get their news from online influencers.

‘The issue, of course, is not just that there are LOTS more platforms – and a LOT less gatekeepers,’ Cillizza added – writing later on how the firings this week showed how mainstream media’s decline has gone ‘from gradual to steep’.

‘It’s also that people were already looking for alternatives because they have lost so much trust in the mainstream media,’ he concluded in the January 1 post.

Replies to Stelter’s comments offered similar assessments – albeit in the form of quips where commenters essentially told the media reporter ‘I told you so.’ 

CNN CEO Mark Thompson brought Stelter back to the station – and its recently pay-walled website – this past September.

 ‘It’s because companies like CNN abandoned most every tenet of journalism to their own prejudices,’ one user wrote in response, as Oliver Darcy, Stelter’s successor but now the founder and operator of Status, reported layoffs were in the cards for NBC.

The report saw Stelter quote a former colleague in Chris Cillizza, who also was fired by then CEO Chris Licht in late 2022

Stelter, laid off during a wave of firings in 2022 but since brought back, said the writing was on the wall as early as a decade ago – but that he did not suspect the shift to be so pronounced

He was axed by a then-languishing Licht, but brought back in September by the station’s new CEO

‘We tried to warn you,’ another added. 

‘No one believes your “industry” any longer,’ sniped someone else. 

The former Reliable Sources host, whose program he had anchored since 2013 was pulled by Licht, went on to quote reporting from Darcy, who briefly manned the Reliable Sources desk before the show ended for good in 2022. 

The Status report, published about eight hours before the CNN layoffs, stated how NBC News is ‘planning to carry out some cuts’ as well, at the same time CNN.

‘ABC News is anticipating “long-rumored layoffs” too,’ Darcy wrote, after leaving the network of his own accord in August.

Meanwhile, a staffer told DailyMail.com hours after the layoff they occurred because the network’s historically important TV division has become so ‘bloated’ – overstaffed with people who do the bare minimum’

‘Layoffs all the time – they needed to cut the fat,’ the insider told DailyMail.com, calling the network ‘very duplicative’ – with many workers whose roles closely overlap – and a ‘money pit.’  

The firings, meanwhile, come as part of  Thompson’s long-in-the works restructuring plan – one that seek to put a premium on CNN’s digital presence rather he news channel.

That’s Mark Thompson, pictured, who announced 200 layoffs from the network’s traditional TV operation on Thursday morning . An insider said the station had become ‘too bloated’ in recent years, following a merger between Discovery and then parent Warner Bros.

Stelter’s successor, Oliver Darcy, left the network last year by his own accord to start the Status newsletter. Stelter on Thursday quoted Darcy as well, after he said layoffs were also in the cards for NBC News and potentially ABC

In a statement issued Thursday morning to The New York Times , Thompson warned that future is still unclear – revealing to how CNN is now set to roll out a streaming service that will feature all of its most well-known stars.

The layoffs, as a result, will greatly affect the network’s traditional TV operations, he said – though it still remains unclear if any big names were affected.

Along with the streaming service, CNN will also a push toward vertical videos, Thompson said – pointing to the shorter clips found on apps like Instagram and TikTok often consumed in quick succession.

‘You can use your thumb to flick from a CNN news story to a CNN anchor to a reporter,’ he said of the method of media delivery popular with younger people. 

‘That’s a really interesting experiment.’ He told the Time how the network now plans to publish 50 to 100 of these videos per day.

That’s not the only experiment Thompson laid bare as the channel languishes behind both Fox News and MSNBC in terms of ratings – with the other being an abrupt tone-down in Trump reporting.

Those plans emerged in the form of insider statements sent around this week, detailing how Thompson told staff how he wanted them to keep biases to themselves, and refrain from honing in on Trump’s criminal history.

He ‘made it clear that he did not want the coverage to relitigate the past’, former media reporter Darcy wrote in his newsletter at the time, adding that all the network’s biggest names, including Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper, were in attendance.

Thompson has also told staff how he wanted them to tone down their reporting on Donald Trump, and refrain from honing in on the president’s criminal history. He is also experimenting with a streaming service, more vertical videos, and a service surrounding lifestyle content

Thompson, who was brought in to address declining numbers at both the Times and BBC as well, also announced another digital venture set to come later this year – a subscription product surrounding ‘lifestyle’-related content.

‘This is a moment where the digital story feels like an existential question,’ he told the Times, after leading the paper for almost eight years. 

‘If we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.’