For years, America’s legacy media insisted that race-focused journalism was not only morally essential—but commercially brilliant. Now, as layoffs sweep through newsrooms coast to coast, those same outlets are quietly abandoning the very “diversity verticals” they once treated as untouchable.
The latest and most symbolic cut came this week at The Washington Post, where Emmanuel Felton, the paper’s race and ethnicity reporter, revealed he had been laid off amid hundreds of staff reductions.
Felton wasted no time framing his dismissal as ideological retaliation. His X profile now brands him the “first and last race and ethnicity reporter” at the paper, a title that feels less ironic by the day.
“This comes six months after hearing in a national meeting that race coverage drives subscriptions,” Felton wrote Wednesday. “This wasn’t a financial decision, it was an ideological one.”
Felton, who is Black, joined the Post in June 2021 after stints at BuzzFeed News’ inequality desk, according to his LinkedIn and author bio. His position was born in the post-George Floyd media frenzy, when news organizations rushed to embed racial analysis into nearly every beat—often at the expense of traditional reporting.
But the tide has turned.
“The other reporter on my team covering race was also laid off as well as the editor in charge of race coverage across national. The team covering America beyond DC is now 90% [W]hite,” Felton added.
Felton’s exit is far from an isolated case. Across the industry, media companies are dismantling race-based desks that ballooned after the 2020 riots sparked by George Floyd’s death—an era when corporate newsrooms openly embraced activist language, DEI mandates, and identity-first storytelling, Fox News Digital reported.
The rollback has accelerated alongside Donald Trump’s political resurgence, as outlets quietly recalibrate after years of alienating middle-America readers.
At NBC News, roughly 7–8% of staff—about 100 to 150 employees—were laid off in October, according to insiders. Among those cut were staffers tied to so-called “diversity verticals,” a network source told Fox News Digital.
NBC News previously operated multiple identity-focused subsections, including NBC BLK, NBC Asian America, NBC Latino, and NBC Out.
NBC BLK’s landing page describes its mission as providing “stories, issues and opinions from the African American perspective,” while NBC Out says it “showcases feature stories, original videos and other unique content about, and of interest to, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community.”
Those sections remain visible—but their staffing has not.
CBS News went even further, completely dismantling its Race & Culture Unit during mass layoffs at parent company Paramount.
When the unit launched in July 2020, executive producer Alvin Patrick described it as a kind of ideological checkpoint inside the newsroom.
“The Race and Culture Unit will serve as both an incubator and a facilitator,” Patrick said at the time. “So that means that on a daily basis, we are serving, just like CBS Standards and Practices, as an extra pair of fresh eyes on stories that may need guidance on context, tone and intention for every show and platform in the division.”
“The goal is really to create a level of consistency as we report on race and culture, in a timely, accurate, informative and dynamic way,” he added.
After the unit was eliminated, Patrick was reassigned as executive producer of Head of Content Business Development, according to LinkedIn. Former CBS associate producer Trey Sherman, who worked in the Race & Culture Unit, later accused the network on TikTok of racially motivated layoffs, claiming Black employees were let go while White staffers stayed.
Notably, the now-defunct unit was also where CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil was forced to report after internal complaints over his tense interview with anti-Israel author Ta-Nehisi Coates, a darling of the far left.
The pattern extends well beyond New York and Washington.
In 2024, the Los Angeles Times slashed roughly 23% of its staff, including members of De Los, its Latino-focused vertical. According to Nieman Lab, at least three reporters, an editor, and a columnist from that team were laid off.
The Philadelphia Inquirer followed suit last March, eliminating its Communities and Engagement Desk, which had been dedicated to coverage of “marginalized communities.” Axios reported the desk was part of the paper’s DEI initiatives, proudly promoted just a year earlier.
While the Inquirer’s DEI webpage remains live, references to the desk have since vanished.
“The Philadelphia Inquirer is committed to becoming a diverse, inclusive, equitable, and anti-racist organization by evolving how it operates through its culture, coverage of the news, and service to the community,” the paper previously declared. “We are building an inclusive culture, grounded in anti-racism and equity, that fosters a sense of belonging for all at The Inquirer… We are working to ensure equity is centered in how The Inquirer approaches journalism. We seek to consistently address systemic racism and other forms of oppression through inclusive, actively anti-racist coverage that reflects, serves, and is informed by all communities.”
That mission statement now reads more like a relic of a bygone era.
Even niche political media isn’t immune. Politico suspended its race-focused newsletter “The Recast” last September after four years. Bloomberg similarly shut down its “Equality” newsletter last year, though its broader reporting vertical still exists.
For years, legacy media claimed identity-driven journalism was the future—and that questioning it was heresy. Now, with shrinking audiences, collapsing trust, and mounting financial pressure, the same outlets are discovering what conservatives warned all along: ideology doesn’t sell newspapers.
And for Emmanuel Felton, the irony is impossible to miss. The beat that was supposed to be indispensable turned out to be expendable.
