More than a third of the Miami Herald's newsroom is gone. The cuts follow a fight over AI that played out in that same newsroom months earlier.
McClatchy cut more than 90 positions across its 30 newspapers Thursday. More than 30 of those roles were at the Miami Herald, over a third of its editorial staff.
The Scale of Thursday's Cuts
The newsroom of El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald's Spanish-language sister paper, was almost completely eliminated. That's according to five people with knowledge of the layoffs.
Carol Marbin Miller, the Herald's deputy investigations editor, called the cuts "a blood bath." She's worked at the paper 26 years and said she couldn't recall a day when 30 positions disappeared at once.
"We're all gobsmacked by the breadth of the cuts," Miller said. The reductions included the paper's City Hall reporter and left its Miami Beach beat position unfilled.
What McClatchy Says Drove the Decision
McClatchy executive Greg Farmer was direct in an email to newsrooms Thursday. "We cannot continue investing where subscriber interest does not support the investment," he wrote.
Farmer said consumer revenue had dropped 41% over five years while expenses stayed flat. He said McClatchy would instead invest in journalism that is "differentiated, consequential and difficult to replicate."
A person close to the decision told the New York Times the layoffs were not related to McClatchy's use of AI. They attributed the cuts instead to business performance.
The AI Fight That Preceded This
That framing sits alongside a detail worth remembering. Earlier this year, journalists across many McClatchy newsrooms withheld their bylines from a new AI tool the company had rolled out. That included the Miami Herald.
The tool summarized articles and produced new versions for different audiences. Miami Herald staff raised alarm at the time about AI-generated content running under their names without proper disclosure.
That fight produced a real outcome. Miami Herald's union secured contract language restricting how AI could be used in the newsroom, along with a requirement that AI-assisted pieces carry a "Produced using AI" disclosure.
What This Means for Miami's Only Daily Paper
Miller's warning about what comes next was blunt. "Miami is about to become a news desert," she said. "Even if we survive these cuts, there just won't be enough of us left to do a fraction of what this market requires."
McClatchy says these cuts have nothing to do with AI. Whatever the cause, this newsroom fought hard this year over how AI gets disclosed in its own pages. It now has a third fewer people left to do the disclosing.