Media | Staff layoffs impacting operations at two Virginia newspapers

Layoffs at the Davenport, Iowa,-based Lee Enterprises are impacting operations at two Virginia newspapers, and, who knows, perhaps more.

The Times-Dispatch in Richmond laid off at least five of its reporters last week, leaving that newspaper with in the area of 10 reporters on the staff.

That’s hard for me to fathom – The Times-Dispatch with 10 people covering the whole of Virginia.

And here locally for us, The News Virginian in Waynesboro laid off its last remaining full-time reporter – we’re told that the plan is to have staff at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, a half-hour away, provide spot coverage of local issues going forward.

I’d expect that these aren’t the only layoffs at Lee Enterprises, which publishes more than 400 daily, weekly and specialty publications across the U.S., including 11 in Virginia.

The company is working its way through a rough financial first quarter of the 2025-2026 fiscal year that began on July 1, with revenue dropping 7.1 percent, and the company reporting a $16.7 million net loss.

Lee said, in response, that it had identified $40 million in cost savings, as it works to beef up its digital subscription base.

“As we look forward into the rest of the fiscal year, we expect digital revenue growth to accelerate, achieving full-year guidance of growth between 7 percent and 10 percent,” Lee Enterprises CEO Kevin Mowbray said in a statement.

The hard part to beefing up digital subscriptions, of course, is – cutting staff means cutting content, which is what gets people to pay for digital subscriptions.

I’m one of those digital subscribers, to The News Virginian – which is where I got my start in journalism, 30 years ago.

I can’t possibly be that old.

A problem I’ve seen with Lee’s approach is the availability of content from its network of publications.

My News Virginian subscription gives me access to basically everything that I’d want to read from its sister news outlets in Virginia.

That’s good for me as a consumer, but not good for the bottom line of Lee Enterprises – or the good media professionals now out of work.

Or communities that will have fewer people keeping their eyes on those in power.

“This is a tough blow for Richmond and part of an ongoing tragedy across the country — the continuous destruction of local media,” U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., observed, obviously before the full scale of the Lee layoffs was known.

“Local press does invaluable work holding power to account and keeping folks informed. We must continue to support our remaining and incredible local journalists,” Warner said.

He had a Senate staffer call me earlier in the year to read me the riot act over unflattering coverage, but anyway.