Democracy Dies in Darkness

WAMU shuts down local news site DCist, lays off reporters

The station, a member of the NPR network, acquired DCist in 2018. It now has four journalists, down from 14 last year

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Updated February 23, 2024 at 3:07 p.m. EST|Published February 23, 2024 at 9:32 a.m. EST
The headquarters for radio station WAMU 88.5 in Northwest Washington. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
5 min

The Washington-area NPR affiliate WAMU shut down local news site DCist on Friday morning, immediately following an all-staff meeting where employees were informed that layoffs are imminent.

Station general manager Erika Pulley-Hayes made the announcement during a roughly 10-minute meeting, during which no questions were taken. She told staffers that the shift was part of a new strategy to focus more on audio products rather than the written journalism that WAMU had hoped to bolster when it acquired DCist six years ago.