The Mirror

As CNN ‘Braces’ For More Cuts, Fears Are Palpable

Betsy Rothstein Gossip blogger
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Employees in CNN’s major bureaus of New York, Atlanta and Washington are on edge these days as some anticipate more cuts. The feeling is that they’ll happen in December, but they could come far sooner than that.

“Several CNN staffers are scared to death,” a media insider told The Mirror over the weekend.

Sources told The Mirror, “CNN is going to get hit HARD. There is apprehension, especially in Atlanta. December is going to be brutal. Zucker’s spending has been outrageous.” (Zucker is, of course, CNN President Jeff Zucker.)

In recent weeks, some 15 employees in the D.C. bureau got the axe, including CNN Washington opinion editor Bryan Monroe and national correspondent Shannon Travis. Monroe’s and Travis’s Twitter accounts still mention CNN. (See a recent report on CNN’s black employees getting left behind as the result of cuts here.)

A memo to Turner employees last week reported that “organizational changes were on the horizon.” Those changes are expecting in the “coming weeks,” understandably leaving people on pins and needles. At the beginning of May, some 50 positions were cut in a major reorganization effort. Employees in New York, LA, Atlanta and D.C. were affected. The network planned to rehire at least some of those workers.

In early June, according to TheWrap, Turner Broadcasting CEO John Martin issued a memo to relay this message: Likely staff changes and reduced spending is “less impactful areas.”

In mid-June Variety‘s senior TV editor Brian Steinberg wrote that several ad buyers were bristling from CNN’s new emphasis on entertainment reporting and straying from the hard news for which it has always been known.

The Mirror sought comment from a CNN publicist. They rarely, if ever, comment on personnel matters.