Is AI taking journalists' jobs, or just their readers? Reach cuts 220 editorial roles

Reach, publisher of the Mirror, Express, Daily Star and regional titles including the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo, told staff on 16 September 2026 it would cut 220 editorial jobs and close three online-only brands, KentLive, AberdeenLive and GalwayBeo. Chief content officer David Higgerson wrote that the company is "in the middle of a mammoth shift in how audiences want content and journalism" and must focus investment where audiences spend time, meaning "less emphasis on story volume and more on original journalism". Reach said earlier this year that its digital page views had slumped on a 46% year-on-year fall in Google traffic, as Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews answer readers without sending them to its sites. About 60 roles are being created for subscriptions and longer-form video. It follows a restructure that put 600 roles at risk and cut more than 300 editorial jobs. Reach employed 3,423 staff, 2,494 of them editorial and production. No AI is writing these articles: the mechanism here is AI taking the audience, not the work, and that is a different route to the same lost job.