Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner. Under the purchase agreement, the Post-Gazette’s assets will transfer to the Venetoulis Institute on May 4. The paper, which had been expected to put out its last edition on May 3, will now continue to publish. The newsroom and local business leadership will remain in Pittsburgh while other functions, including technology and business operations, will be combined with teams at the Venetoulis Institute. The Venetoulis Institute and The Banner were founded in 2022 with a $50M commitment from Maryland businessman and philanthropist Stewart Bainum Jr. The purchase of the Post-Gazette is part of an additional $30M pledge Bainum intends to give to the institute over the next five years or until it breaks even, he said. David Shribman, a former executive editor of the Post-Gazette, will join the Venetoulis board of directors. Shribman led the paper’s newsroom from 2003 to 2019 and has strong ties to the Pittsburgh community.

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force. The move will be the largest round of job cuts for the organization in the last 15 years. It is a response to what the BBC says is “growing financial pressure” on its operations. It was not revealed which jobs will be affected, and interim BBC head Rhodri Talfan Davies, said that the corporation would give more details “later this year” about how the BBC’s services would change in an attempt to slice £500 million (about $675M) from its budget over the next two years. That amount, bad as it may be, is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the $10B lawsuit filed against the BBC, alleging defamation and deceptive editing of his January 6, 2021 speech on a Panorama documentary that the platform ran.

Snap

Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people. In addition, according to Reuters, 300 roles that are now open at the company will not be filled. Taking over for the lost positions: AI. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said he believes adoption of artificial intelligence tools will allow the company to move faster and ship more products, with a new “jobs to be done” structure that aggressively leverages AI agents. The company anticipates cutting more than $500 million in expenses by the second half of 2026, fueled significantly by the layoffs. A March 31 letter from Irenic Capital Management, a substantial investor in the company, advised Snap that “like many of your peers, you over-hired. Unlike your peers, you haven’t course corrected.”