The Associated Press laid off 20 U.S.-based journalists on Friday, the union representing them said, part of a restructuring announced last month that is turning the news organization’s focus away from print journalism and toward visual journalism and other revenue sources.“This is part of the restructuring we announced last month to align our operations with what our top customers need from us today,” an AP spokesman, Patrick Maks, said in an email. “It’s never easy to part ways with valued colleagues — we are appreciative of their contributions to the AP and wish them all the best,” wrote Maks, the news outlet’s director of media relations and corporate communications.AP declined to give numbers, but the News Media Guild, the union that represents AP journalists, said 20 guild-covered staffers had been laid off. The layoffs had been completed by the end of the business day Friday.
The layoffs, which had been expected, come about a month after AP, one of the world’s oldest and most influential news organizations, offered buyouts to more than 120 journalists based in the United States. About 40 subsequently volunteered and were accepted, according to the guild.
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Tony Winton, the guild’s administrator, said the union had received an email just before 10 a.m. Friday from an AP human resources official saying the company was planning to implement layoffs, and the last day of work was Friday. He said no other information was provided.
