News 12 axes scores of journos from Bronx, Brooklyn, Westchester and Connecticut newsrooms: ‘Dire’
An earthquake hit local broadcast journalists across the New York metropolitan area this week as News 12 carried out sweeping layoffs that gutted newsrooms, eliminated dozens of jobs and sharply scaled back hyperlocal coverage, The Post has learned.
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One employee who was laid off this week described a restructuring that effectively dismantles News 12’s standalone operations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Westchester and Connecticut, replacing separate local newscasts with a single regional broadcast featuring only brief local segments.
Long Island and New Jersey will continue producing separate broadcasts because they attract stronger ratings, according to the employee.
The layoffs — which impacted at least three dozen people, including veteran journalists who amassed decades of service time at the company — were first reported by the industry blog FTVLive.
The cuts include 11 editorial News 12 Connecticut employees such as veteran on-air journalists Becky Suran and Mark Sudol, along with photographers, executive producers and editorial managers, according to Connecticut news blog 06880.
The outlet reported that just seven journalists and photographers will remain at the Norwalk, Conn., bureau and that reporters will now be expected to shoot their own stories.
“They’re basically going to combine” the regions into one shared newscast, one laid-off employee told The Post.
“If you were to turn on the TV in Westchester, you would start getting news from Connecticut and Westchester and the Bronx and Brooklyn kind of all in one half-hour show.”
A spokesperson for Altice USA, the parent company of News 12, told The Post: “Local journalism is changing, and News 12 is evolving with it.”
“As audiences increasingly consume news across platforms and formats, we are taking proactive steps to ensure News 12 remains strong, relevant, and sustainable for the future,” the spokesperson added.
The flack declined to state how many people were laid off.
The source who spoke to The Post estimated that at least three dozen employees were let go across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Westchester and Connecticut, calling that figure “probably even a low estimate.”
The employee personally counted 26 people on Tuesday’s layoff call covering the Bronx and Brooklyn operation and said at least six others were cut in Westchester alone.
The layoffs have left employees questioning whether News 12 can continue delivering the neighborhood-by-neighborhood coverage that helped make the network a fixture throughout the New York suburbs after it launched under Cablevision more than three decades ago.
“There is a big amount of hopelessness,” the employee said. “People are taking this layoff as, ‘It’s time for me to leave the industry.’”
The person said the cuts came with virtually no warning.
“I basically woke up to the news,” the source said, describing how workers received a text early Tuesday morning directing them to join a Microsoft Teams meeting where they were informed their jobs had been eliminated. “No real warning at all that something like this was coming.”
While the employee acknowledged television audiences have been declining, they said workers had repeatedly embraced management’s push toward digital and social media, only to become frustrated by what they described as an inconsistent strategy.
“People wanted to embrace the future,” the employee said. “But their strategy just did not match our enthusiasm.”
Perhaps the biggest concern among remaining staffers is safety.
The layoffs sharply reduced the number of photographers available to accompany reporters responding to breaking news across the Bronx and Brooklyn, making some journos worry they could soon be sent alone to dangerous crime scenes or confront grieving families without backup.
“Reporters are feeling very concerned for their safety,” the employee said. “How are we supposed to cover breaking news while we’re alone?”
The source said News 12 has long relied on two-person crews because photographers frequently accompany reporters into unpredictable situations, including homicide scenes and neighborhoods where suspects may still be nearby.
“Safety is the most important thing of why you need a team out in the field rather than just one person,” the employee said.
The latest cuts follow years of retrenchment at News 12 under Altice, which acquired Cablevision in 2016.
The network eliminated about 70 jobs in 2017 after the acquisition, prompting litigation from the Dolan family over staffing commitments.
More layoffs followed in 2023 after a settlement requiring minimum staffing levels expired, with around 30 to 40 employees losing their jobs across the tri-state operation.
The newly announced restructuring appears to go significantly further than those earlier rounds by fundamentally changing how several of News 12’s local channels operate.
The laid-off employee said morale inside the company has deteriorated to its lowest point yet.
“There was a huge round of layoffs pretty recently,” the source said. “But this one feels … the most like no one is happy. No one’s feeling hopeful.
“It’s definitely pretty dire.”
