Yahoo News, so it seems, is out of touch with the younger generations. According to a report in the Daily Beast, the website is shuttering its “Originals” teams and its “In The Know” vertical aimed at Millennials and members of Gen Z.
Obviously, Yahoo has not been what it used to be for decades now. To say that the world’s first directory of websites that burst onto the scene in the late 1990s was quickly eclipsed by Google would be an understatement. Has anyone ever said about a web search that one should “Yahoo it?”
Yahoo News general manager Kat Downs Mulder told staffers about the firings in a memo that was obtained by The Daily Beast.
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“We’ve made the difficult decision to make changes in several areas of the U.S. editorial team, which means we must part ways with some colleagues, which was obtained by,” she said, adding that Yahoo News has a goal to be “a trusted guide to high quality digital content.”
“These decisions were not made to cut costs, but to realign our resources and efforts to achieve our strategy – making Yahoo News the best place to go to find out what’s going on in the world and get things done,” wrote Mulder to employees.
Generation Z, also known as Zoomers or Gen Z, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as the starting birth years and the early 2010s as the ending birth years.
Generation Z is the first generation to have been born and raised with technology, and they are highly proficient in using digital devices and the internet. It is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in history and is said to be more pragmatic than previous generations, and they are more likely to prioritize financial security and stability over other factors such as career satisfaction or personal fulfillment.
So important is this generation to any company’s revenue streams, it is telling that Yahoo News would shutter such divisions entirely and not simply restructure them.
Gen Z is so significant that even the Oxford Word of the Year for 2023 is “Rizz.” Pertaining to someone’s ability to attract another person through style, charm, or attractiveness, this term is popular with Gen Z.
One of the laid-off journalists, Ben Adler, Tweeted, “I was laid off from Yahoo News today. If you’re paying people for writing or editing about politics, policy, climate change, energy, housing, transportation, architecture, NYC, pizza, or anything else that can pay my mortgage.”