They Created This Term to Smear Average Americans. Now It’s Come Back to Haunt Them.

Trouble has been brewing at the LA Times for months now. Politico had a deep dive into the internal drama at the publication. They’re not the only ones: The Washington Post also veers toward poverty. Media is a changing landscape. As with any enterprise, you’re on the endangered species list if you don't make money. Well, the hammer came down at the LA Times, as hundreds have been laid off. Over 100 employees were given a pink slip on Tuesday (via LA Times):

LATimes confirms 115 journalists laid off, or about 23 percent; newsroom will be at approx 385.

NOTE: Taken in combination with last year's layoffs, the Los Angeles Times has laid off about one third of its newsroom in less than a year.
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) January 23, 2024

The Los Angeles Times announced Tuesday that it was laying off at least 115 people — or more than 20% of the newsroom — in one of the largest workforce reductions in the history of the 142-year-old institution.
The move comes amid projections for another year of heavy losses for the newspaper.
The cuts were necessary because the paper could no longer lose $30 million to $40 million a year without making progress toward building higher readership that would bring in advertising and subscriptions to sustain the organization, said the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Drastic changes were needed, he said, including installing new leaders who would focus on strengthening the outlet’s journalism to become indispensable to more readers.

Liberal media outlets are starting to get pinched. While it’s sad when anyone gets fired, these folks were at the forefront of shaming those whose employment they determined was less-than, archaic, or not in keeping with the ways of the new world, whatever that means. In other words, if it required manual labor, the media, Democrats, and the coastal elite viewed it as a state of serfdom. Coal miners were a popular target. Whole communities that dot Appalachia were subjected to what some would call a regional genocide under the Obama presidency. His agenda took a hatchet to coal jobs, and most of these towns seldom recovered.

That’s when the “learn to code” smear was tossed into the mix by liberal reporters to coal miners and other workers who lost their livelihoods. The labor was viewed as inferior if it didn’t require a college education. Even worse, reporters mocked these newly unemployed workers, blaming them for being uneducated. The job retraining programs were a publicity stunt. Even labor unions knew this was a ruse. So, it was delicious revenge to see LA Times employees essentially saying that “learn to code” is heartless and unoriginal amid the layoffs. No, you don’t get to play that game. You created it. Now, sit there like good children, be wrong, and shut up. You lost your job—you don't have a right to say anything.

For those inclined to respond to folks who've just been laid off from newspaper jobs, telling them to "learn to code" is not only mean and heartless but unoriginal and not at all clever.
Rather, look inside and ask how you grew that black hole where your heart is supposed to be.
— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) January 23, 2024

It's an exercise in memory holing that is something to behold. And it wasn’t lost on those on social media.

They Created This Term to Smear Average Americans. Now It’s Come Back to Haunt Them.

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