Something Bad Just Happened

The quiet layoff you might not notice

Something bad just happened. Most people won’t notice it, because it didn’t happen at a Big Famous Publication like the Washington Post, where the people affected have connections and a large platform.

It happened at Scientific American, a magazine you’ve almost certainly heard of but probably don’t read, at least not regularly.

That’s a shame, because it’s become really readable in recent years, in no small part thanks to the very people who just got dumped.

SciAm, as it’s fondly referred to, was owned by Springer Nature, a publishing giant that owns scientific journals including Nature.

They just sold it to the conglomerate that publishes Discover, among other titles. The new owners promptly fired the unionized employees, including some of the best science writers and editors in the business.

Full disclosure here: I had occasionally written opinion pieces for SciAm and am friends with a former editor. Science writers run into each other on boards and committees, at meetings and conferences that we cover, on fellowships, on judging panels, at hearings, etc. So we know each other on a professional and social basis.

But I haven’t written for SciAm in more than a year, so I feel I can be dispassionate in my outrage over this cruel and self-defeating decision.

Journalism is in a bad place. Few people who value good journalism would argue against that. The Washington Post has been torn apart; CBS is destroyed and it looks like CNN is about to be; private equity groups have bought up and sucked dry or outright killed local newspapers; local radio news has been dead for decades. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire made a joke of the idea that news coverage should be apolitical and unbiased or that it should cover actual news.

Scientific American, once a fairly dense and hard-to-read magazine, has been a holdout against the trend, providing readable and timely coverage of science for the average educated person.

So dumping the very people who make it readable and relevant seems deliberate.

The Writer’s Guild of America-East thinks so, too.

“We have reason to believe that the sale was motivated by fear within Springer Nature that our attempts to doggedly report on the crisis facing science in America today would lead to repercussions from the Trump Administration. On multiple occasions the company has sought to quash or tone down political or sensitive stories that were journalistically sound,” the Guild said in a statement released Tuesday.

Staff at Scientific American had joined the Guild in April.

News organizations never admit they were wrong to lay people off, so don’t expect LabX Media Group to say “Whoops — we were wrong!” and hire everyone back with a big pay raise. At best, less-experienced staff will replace these talented journalists and make no mistake about whether they will question or push back against their bosses when it comes to editorial decisions.

And this is the not-so-subtle change that is really hurting journalism and that, in turn, is hurting the public.

The best reporters and editors are jerks who are not afraid of anyone. Not even their bosses. They are used to questioning presidents and politicians, corporate CEOs and generals, warlords and thugs. The good ones are not afraid to push back against an editor or publisher or executive producer.

But the new owners are sending clear messages. Talk back and lose your job. Unionize and you are on the street. Look at what’s happening at CBS. What does that do to the coverage that results?

It sure as shooting is not going to get better.

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