Marketplace Staffers Find Layoffs Announcement 'Incredibly Jarring.'

In response to American Public Media Group's announcement of layoffs at its business-focused public radio outlet Marketplace – first revealed on a LinkedIn post from Marketplace's General Manager Neal Scarborough, and later in a staff meeting with APMG CEO Jean Taylor – employees expressed shock and anger as to how the news was given and handled.

“The communication rollout was really disheartening,” one Marketplace staff member said, according to Semafor. Other staffers referred to Taylor's approach in her meeting – which she launched with a trailer for APMG's “Splendid Table” podcast, and a 20-minute reflection on her “finding joy” in an unstable world – as “tone-deaf” and “incredibly jarring. It felt like Marketplace was an afterthought.”

Acknowledging that he had “some regret” about how the news of the elimination of seven roles got out, Scarborough, in a meeting with Marketplace staff, echoed key points from the LinkedIn post, chiefly the need to rapidly expand its audience beyond radio.

“If we’re really going to grow and be part of the future, the future is about having our content where the audiences that we want live and thrive,” he said. “Part of this vision is that we actually are creating more digital touch points through social media, through quickly consumed content, through explainers, through filling the void of what people are trying to figure out. If we only do that on a radio, we’re not going to be here for 20 more years.”

Scarborough's post also noted that Marketplace is “very aware of waning state and federal funding and a softening underwriting market.” Addressing the issue, Taylor said the organization was pursuing aggressive fundraising and philanthropic goals, including setting its largest fundraising goal ever. “We are looking at and putting together plans for what [we] will do if that funding goes away, and when we look at those plans, we are going to implement some of them whether the funding goes away or not,” she says. “We’re going to play offense here.”

In addition to the layoffs, other changes announced included moving from APMG's downtown Los Angeles headquarters to Pasadena to share space with sister station, news/talk “LAist 89.3” KPCC, as well as doubling down on partnerships with local community-based public media stations, and, as noted in the LinkedIn post, “focusing our content strategies around areas that we know our audiences and potential audiences want and need, such as financial literacy, sustainability, entrepreneurship, the new workplace and this economy.”