What The Hell America!

America’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett, will no longer publish demographic and diversity data about its workforce, and has revamped its corporate site to remove mentions of diversity.

The announcement was made in a company town hall meeting on Wednesday afternoon. A spokesperson told me the company is “adapting to the evolving regulatory environment,” and, in a follow-up email when I asked for clarification, referred me to Trump’s January 22 executive order eliminating DEI initiatives in federal agencies and calling for an end to “private sector DEI discrimination.”

Gannett did not specify whether the Trump administration had contacted anyone at the company, or asked them to make changes. Major U.S. companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta have also rolled back DEI initiatives this year.

“While we will no longer publish workforce demographic metrics or sustainability and inclusion reports, Gannett is deeply committed to our ethical business model,” Lark-Marie Antón, Gannett’s chief communications officer, told me in a statement. When I asked the company to define “ethical business model,” they said it is “based on treating all our employees with respect and ensuring a culture of belonging.”

As part of the racial reckoning surrounding George Floyd’s death in 2020, Gannett, which owns USA Today and more than 200 local newspapers, pledged “its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and parity in all of its newsrooms” in August 2020. That month, it published diversity data for all of its newsrooms and promised to “make its workforce as diverse as the country by 2025 and to expand the number of journalists focused on covering issues related to race and identity, social justice and equality.”

The company published inclusion reports on staff diversity from 2020 to 2023. The latest report from 2023 says 63% of employees identified as white, down from 73% in 2020. In 2023, 33.9% of hires were people of color.

“We share our fourth annual Inclusion Report amid a backdrop of global conflict, social and racial discrimination and injustice, climate change, volatile economies and the ongoing impact of the receding pandemic,” LaToya Johnson, senior director of inclusion strategy, wrote in the report. “In many areas, we’re seeing a disturbing rise in hate: antisemitism, xenophobia, islamophobia, attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and more.”

Per LinkedIn, Johnson was promoted to the role of vice president of global inclusion strategy and employer brand in July 2024. In March 2025, her title changed to vice president of culture and employer brand.

Wiping “diversity”

Until February, Gannett had an “Inclusion” page on its website, which I accessed using Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. There is now a “Culture” page and all references to “diversity” have been removed. The Inclusion page now redirects to the inclusion reports.

The old page, for instance, featured a quote from Gannett chairman and CEO Mike Reed: “If we don’t have an inclusive and diverse culture, we’ll fail at everything else,” alongside a video.

On the new page, Reed’s quote is: “We embrace a culture where each individual’s unique perspective unlocks our collective potential, empowering an environment where everyone can thrive and make a difference.” The video has been removed.

Before:

Now:

Before:

Now:

Before:

Now:

Do you know of another news media company making changes to its DEI commitments and policies? Please share your tips with me via email or Signal.