More than 2,400 people lost their jobs in a media landslide so far this year

• In March, New York Media announced that it was cutting 32 job. That brought the number of media jobs eliminated in 2019 to over 2,400 along with other layoffs the same month. Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, First Look Media, and Digg also had cuts.
• The cuts follow layoff announcements at BuzzFeed, Verizon, Vice Media, McClatchy company, Machinima, and Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the US.
• It is estimated that between 2014 and 2017, some 5,000 media jobs were cut from the market.

The media industry continued to announce large cuts in March, as New York Media laid off 32 employees and 5% of its full-time staff, and Cleveland's The Plain dealer announced that it would eliminate 41 positions this year. The announcement followed large rounds of layoffs in February from companies like BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.

The massive cuts so far this year represent a recent trend of cuts at digital-media companies that sprung up as newspapers around the country were shrinking and disappearing.

Here are the media jobs lost so far in 2019 »

SEE ALSO: Vice Media was once flying high with buzzy branded content and a lucrative millennial audience. Now it's planning to cut 10% of employees

Digg: 2 jobs, March 26

Former tech legend turned new media company Digg.com laid off two editors in March, shrinking the number of employees to just 10.

The staffers affected were the managing editor and the features editor, both who wrote and edited original content on the primarily aggregated site, indicating a potential re-focusing on aggregation for the brand which in the last few years had branched out to publishing original writing and video. 

The layoffs follow the sale of Digg in 2018 to ad tech company BuySellAds, which cleaved off nearly half of the company.  

In a statement to Business Insider, BuySellAds CEO said, "this does not mark the end of original content at Digg, nor does it hint at a major change in direction or strategy. We continue to believe in the publication just as much as the day we acquired it."

The Plain Dealer: 41 jobs, March 15

Cleveland, Ohio's The Plain Dealer newspaper announced on March 15 that it would lay off 12 newsroom employees in addition to 29 previously announced layoffs scheduled for May.

Editor George Rodrigue told union members via email that "Since around 2001, newspaper advertising revenue has been plummeting."

The union has asked for the paper to wait until after an upcoming subscription drive to make the cuts and has vowed to fight them.

"This is a catastrophe for Cleveland and for local journalism," Guild unit chairman Ginger Christ said, according to Cleveland.com. 

The 29 jobs at stake are production jobs, which are being moved to a third party factory that the paper is contracting. The additional 12 jobs are in the paper's news department. 

First Look Media: 4 jobs; March 13

On March 13, First Look Media, parent company of Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept and Laura Poitras' Field of Vision, laid off four members of its data and research team (4% of the company) who were tasked with maintaining and securing the company's archive of materials leaked to Greenwald and Poitras by Edward Snowden.

The Edward Snowden archive was also shut down with the layoffs. 

First Look Media CEO Michael Bloom reportedly told staffers that the company had decided to "focus on other editorial priorities" after mining the Snowden archive for five years.

Bloom continued, "It is our hope that Glenn and Laura are able to find a new partner — such as an academic institution or research facility — that will continue to report on and publish the documents in the archive consistent with the public interest," according to The Daily Beast.