MTV News layoffs: The end of a nostalgic news site
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MTV News, once home to the hippest anchor desk of Generation X, will shut down after 36 years, according to multiple reports. Its parent company, Paramount Global, told staff Tuesday that layoffs would affect 25 percent of employees at Showtime, MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks, according to a memo cited by the Hollywood Reporter. The cuts will greatly affect MTV News, which will shutter completely.
Paramount and MTV did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Although it hasn’t been a major news organization in decades, MTV News joins many other outlets that have faced severe reductions or shutdowns in recent months, including CNN, BuzzFeed News and Vice Media.
The popular music channel launched its news operation in the late 1980s, and for a time found popularity with Generation X and older millennials tired of traditional anchors. “We know the latest, hippest music to put something with. That’s our strength,” Dave Sirulnick, the news operation’s then-27-year-old director, told the New York Times during the 1992 presidential race.
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Two years later, the Hollywood Reporter wrote, President Bill Clinton appeared on MTV’s “Enough Is Enough,” hosted by former Rolling Stone writer Kurt Loder, in an attempt to reach younger audiences.
The channel brought news and analysis to the music generation for years afterward, reporting on Kurt Cobain’s suicide and the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.
“In [its] prime, MTV News was one of the most influential programs in existence,” podcaster Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins tweeted after news of the layoffs broke Tuesday.
But the years took their toll. After three decades of helping oversee MTV’s news and documentary operation, Variety reported, Sirulnick left the company amid a wave of cost-cutting several years ago.
Staffers with MTV News took to Twitter on Tuesday to mourn the organization’s final blow.
“This is a very sad day for a lot of friends and colleagues. Many great people lost their jobs,” tweeted Josh Horowitz, who has been the face of MTV’s movie coverage.
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Source: The Washington Post
