Another round of layoffs has brought dramatic cuts to a city’s local newspaper.

On Monday, Hornets beat reporter Rod Boone of the Charlotte Observer shared on social media that the paper eliminated his position, along with seven colleagues, in the latest round of McClatchy cuts.

Boone said that the news came “less than 48 hours after being told corporate had given the green light to bring back my podcast they whacked two years earlier.” He also noted that the cuts meant that the paper will no longer have a writer dedicated to covering the Hornets, a first since the team’s inception in 1987.

Last week, exactly 10 days before my 5-year anniversary at The Charlotte Observer, my position was eliminated by McClatchy along with 7 of my colleagues.

And it happened less than 48 hours after being told corporate had given the green light to bring back my podcast they whacked… pic.twitter.com/Y0oyO9ZPOI

— Rod Boone (@rodboone) September 14, 2026

The cuts are just the latest in a series of layoffs made at papers controlled by McClatchy. The Miami Herald also laid off staffers this week, including sportswriter Greg Cote, who went back five decades with the paper. The Sacramento Bee was also caught in the wreckage, losing its sports department entirely.

Media layoffs have only become more common in recent years, and local newspapers are especially suffering. They have also often come with a shocking lack of respect from those in charge of deciding who stays and who goes. As Boone says, he got the news of his release just days before his fifth anniversary at the paper, and just days after he was assured that he was clear to bring his podcast back on the air. Similarly, Cote’s dismissal from the Herald came after 54 years of service, and he got the news on his birthday.

“I don’t think I’m owed the next year,” Cote said when discussing the string of layoffs affecting ESPN before suffering the same fate himself. “I don’t think I’m another year in that company. What I do think I’m owed is the respect for me to fashion an exit on my terms, whether they’re ‘allowing’ me to retire or they’re offering me a buyout I can’t refuse.”

Over the past few weeks, the McClatchy layoffs have not made such dignified exits possible for those affected.