Local television broadcaster TEGNA has laid off nearly two dozen journalists who worked on the company’s national fact-checking team.
The layoffs impact reporters, producers, social media editors and writers who worked on Verify, the broadcaster’s initiative to restore trust in the institution of TV journalism by fact-checking misinformation that spreads on social media and other parts of the Internet.
The initiative originally launched at a handful of TEGNA-owned local TV stations in 2015 before rolling out more broadly across TEGNA’s footprint of local ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox outlets. A national team was established to help produce news articles and videos that aired during local TV newscasts and were distributed via TEGNA-owned websites.
On Monday, the website for the national Verify initiative was updated to direct viewers to local TEGNA-owned television stations, where the franchise will continue.
“Over the last several years, we’ve learned that the most impactful Verify work we’re doing is at our local stations,” a spokesperson for TEGNA said in a statement emailed to The Desk. “We’re going to continue that work. Our top priority is to deliver trustworthy, accurate information to local audiences.”
At least 18 journalists who worked on the national Verify initiative are now out of a job, including managing editor Jonathan Forsythe, misinformation analyst Kelly Jones, senior editors Sara Roth and Lindsay Claiborn, and around a dozen digital and on-air journalists.
The layoffs come about two years after TEGNA and other local broadcasters formed an industry group called the Coalition for Local News, which is lobbying federal officials to impose new regulations on streaming services that would allow them to negotiate distribution fees that are similar to what cable and satellite TV companies are charged.
When it launched in 2023, a spokesperson for the Coalition for Local News said the journalism of its participating members “is essential to the well-being of local communities across the nation and is a vital pillar of American democracy.”
