WSJ Management Cuts Health & Science, Education Reporters

They’ve done it again.

One week after announcing plans to outsource 40 IAPE-represented jobs in Finance departments to an artificial intelligence vendor in India, and a little more than two months after CEO Almar Latour touted “the best year on record for Dow Jones,” corporate leaders have continued on a seemingly never-ending quest to find “efficiencies” at the expense of its hardworking staff.

Yesterday, it was WSJ management’s turn—again—to cut positions. Another “we are saying goodbye to some colleagues” email from Editor in Chief Emma Tucker broke the news: a restructuring of Health & Science and Education teams and the layoff of a dozen staffers, including seven IAPE-represented reporters.

With these latest workforce reductions, fifteen union-represented reporting jobs—and 78 IAPE-represented positions overall—have been eliminated this year alone. Since Tucker’s arrival as EIC in 2023, more than 40 IAPE-represented Journal reporters have been summoned to layoff meetings.

So, yes, we say goodbye again. From the IAPE-represented ranks alone, we say goodbye to a collective 70 years of WSJ experience and to award-winning journalists. We say goodbye to colleagues we knew we could always depend on. We say goodbye to friends.

Wall Street Journal subscribers can say goodbye to the reporters’ distinctive, expert articles and other content they’ve been paying top dollar for. WSJ readers will get less.

“I recognize that change can be unsettling,” Tucker wrote in yesterday’s staff memo. That’s not entirely accurate. Change can be exciting or invigorating. But this sort of change—change without any sense of direction, any clear end goal other than mindless cost-cutting under the guise of nebulous restructuring, or any indication workforce reductions will end in the near future—is infuriating.

It is also a big distraction and bad for Dow Jones. This latest change is sure to hasten the drain of WSJ newsroom talent as remaining staffers polish their resumes and reach out to recruiters elsewhere. What is the long-term reward for hard work, loyalty and winning awards at Dow Jones? The answer again and again is an unceremonious kick out the door.

The collective agreement between IAPE and Dow Jones contains negotiated severance and post-termination benefits for all union-represented employees who lose their jobs as a result of these shortsighted layoffs. However, it is clear that current job security provisions in the contract are not sufficient. IAPE members will remember these layoffs when it comes time to renegotiate the current agreement.