Things are looking bleak for McClatchy Company:

This morning, Craig Forman, CEO of McClatchy Company, emailed all staff to say about 10 percent of the newspaper chain’s employees would be offered voluntary buyouts.

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McClatchy publishes newspapers across the nation, including the Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Idaho Statesman, Fresno Bee, and Charlotte Observer. Last August, the company cut about 3.5 percent of the staff, nearly 140 employees.

The slow collapse of the newspaper industry continues, for better or worse. McClatchy is now being grouped with low-grade online outfits like Buzzfeed:

McClatchy’s move follows cuts at the online news outlet BuzzFeed, which last week gave pink slips to 200 employees including the national security staff, and 800 people in the media division of Verizon — the phone company that owns Yahoo, HuffPost, and TechCrunch. Gannett is letting go of 400, and Vice Media this morning announced the layoff of 10 percent of its staff.

In principle, I am in favor of newspapers (not Buzzfeed, HuffPost or Vice Media). But McClatchy has brought its demise upon itself by publishing fake news, as Scott has described here and elsewhere. McClatchy “reporters” Greg Gordon and Peter Stone published an obviously false story, with no support whatsoever, in order to advance the leftist, anti-Trump agenda. In the process they lied about Cleta Mitchell, a friend of ours. When called on their story’s falsity, they refused to back off–politics over everything else! It is easy to understand why newspapers that are viewed as partisan and wholly unreliable are losing money.

We can only hope that Greg Gordon and Peter Stone are among the former McClatchy employees who will now be pounding the pavement.