McClatchy layoffs cut up to 40% of the Fresno Bee's staff as the company leans on AI tools, its union leader says

McClatchy's layoffs have cut up to 40% of the Fresno Bee's staff, says the paper's union leader, and they come as the company asks the reporters who remain to rely on AI tools. Joshua Tehee, a veteran Bee writer and a leader of the Bee News Guild, told Community Alliance (reported by Vic Bedoian, 3 October 2026) that the job cuts take out beats that will be hard to rebuild: "Here in town, we lost an accountability reporter, we lost a civic watchdog reporter, a city hall reporter. We have a reporter that was covering Clovis." Among those laid off were investigative reporters whose work exposed dangerous conditions at Mary's poultry plant and covered immigration, deportation and detention. About eight reporters remain on staff, and the Bee, once a daily, now prints three days a week alongside its website. The cuts reach across McClatchy's Central Valley papers, including the Sacramento Bee, and its titles nationally, among them the Kansas City Star and the Miami Herald. The chain has been owned since 2020 by the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, which bought it out of bankruptcy; Community Alliance reports that part of the reorganisation involves more use of artificial intelligence across McClatchy's newspapers and digital platforms. Tehee is careful about the AI link. He calls it an oversimplification to conclude that reporters will be directly replaced by AI agents, but says: "It is concerning that these cuts are coming at a time when the company has been asking us to delve into or rely on AI tools. Those of us who are left in the newsrooms are going to be asked to do more with less." The article carries no statement from McClatchy itself, so these job cuts are not counted as AI-attributed. The Central Valley chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has backed the laid-off reporters and started a fundraiser for them.