STATEMENT from Ziff Davis Creators Guild, The NewsGuild of New York on layoffs:

Our parent company, the multibillion-dollar Ziff Davis, has announced that it is laying off 23 of our members. This reduction in force impacts over 15% of our bargaining unit and comes just after Ziff Davis executives piled on five more brand acquisitions to the company portfolio in 2025.  

We know the work of our members — including writers, editors, video producers, designers, and other content creators — forms the backbone of Ziff Davis’ reputation and success as a company. Following Ziff Davis’ acquisition of CNET and ZDNET last year, management implemented a voluntary buyout to reduce headcount across its brands and has since touted its profitability and success. At a company-wide town hall in April that was later presented to investors — and only days after laying off five unit members — management praised its media revenue for Q1 and called the overall performance of the newly renamed CNET Group “great.” 

In the face of major challenges to online media traffic, our colleagues have been flexible to new strategies and devoted to pushing our brands forward. The company is now choosing to diminish the quality and breadth of our work, while costing our colleagues their careers and livelihoods.  

These layoffs affect members from Lifehacker, Mashable, and ZDNet, but they hit CNET the hardest. Under CNET’s previous owner, Red Ventures, CNET editorial workers faced three major rounds of layoffs in two years, including the gutting of its essential news and culture teams in 2023. Ziff Davis is now wiping out CNET’s money, broadband, and sleep teams, as well as dismantling the copy desk. At a time when CNET is still building back its reputation after a damaging AI scandal under Red Ventures, Ziff’s decision to further undermine CNET’s human authority is disturbing.

It’s clear what’s truly motivating Ziff Davis executives’ decision to lay off our colleagues: maximizing corporate profits and greed to the detriment of our members, while dismantling the structures that preserve the quality of our work. This massive reduction in force is the direct result of Ziff Davis’ poor management and decision-making, choosing to prioritize anything but investing in the workers who keep its existing brands running.

Our members are so much more than dollars and cents, even as the capricious management at Ziff Davis tries to treat us as such. We won a strong collective bargaining agreement just over a year ago, and we will fight to enforce it so we can preserve our ability to continue producing high-quality work for our readers.