NPR reduces staff through layoffs, buyouts

NPR has laid off staff following a round of voluntary buyouts, NPR Editor-in-Chief Thomas Evans announced in an all-staff memo Wednesday. 

The total workforce reduction amounts to fewer than 30 employees, with the majority taking buyouts, he wrote. David Folkenflik, NPR’s media correspondent, reported that 10 journalists were laid off and at least 18 accepted the buyout.

“Throughout this process, our aim has been to reduce the number of involuntary layoffs,” Evans wrote. “After accepting all eligible staff who applied for a voluntary buyout, we unfortunately needed to make additional reductions.”

Through buyouts, layoffs and the elimination of open roles, NPR is cutting its content division by about 4%, he wrote. 

The total number of layoffs affected less than 1% of NPR staff and less than 2% of the content division, he wrote. The layoffs and buyouts were confined to the content division, according to an NPR spokesperson. 

NPR announced buyouts earlier this month as a way to alleviate financial pressures created by declining revenues from station membership fees and sponsorship. 

Folkenflik reported that National Political Correspondent Don Gonyea and Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James accepted buyouts. Nell Greenfieldboyce, a science correspondent, was laid off.

Several staffers announced their departures on social media:

• Audio Journalism Trainer Jerome Socolovsky said on LinkedIn that he took a buyout. “I’ll have more to say about my next chapter later,” he wrote. “In the meantime, I’m just excited for this new adventure.”
• Joe Shapiro, NPR’s investigations correspondent, said in a Facebook post Tuesday that he accepted the buyout. “Feel privileged to work at NPR (since 2001). Proud of my stories, their impact. Grateful for the best audience,” he wrote. 
• Chief Climate Editor Neela Banerjee announced on LinkedIn that she was laid off. “The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk,” she wrote.

The last day for most staffers who accepted buyouts will be July 17, he wrote. Staff who were laid off leave today. They will receive severance packages that are the same “as they have been for the voluntary buyout,” he added. 

“These cuts hurt,” said the bargaining team for the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union, which represents NPR journalists, in an email Wednesday to its members.

“The circumstances that led to these buyouts and layoffs are challenging, and we continue to have questions about leadership’s chosen path forward,” the bargaining team wrote. “Many of you have raised the question of whether executives will share in the impact of the financial hardship as our union colleagues have. Please know we have continued to push on leadership, through every channel available to us, to show us that they too are contributing to these painful cuts.”

This article was updated to include Banerjee’s and Socolovsky’s announcements and an NPR spokesperson’s confirmation that the staff reductions only impacted the content division.