Monday 18th May: Last week was a bad week for media

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

Hundreds of journalism jobs, in print and digital, were mothballed or simply cut last week. Nieman Lab reports on furloughs, job losses and office closures n bith sides of the Atlantic, with their total for the week reaching 350.

Setting the scene for much of last week's media news, Buzzfeed announced that it was stepping back from hard news in the UK and Australia. It will focus news efforts only in the US.

Quartz CEO Zach Seward's email announcing job losses and office closures must have been hard reading for staff, but there's a humanity in his approach (he just took a 50% pay cut ) and he manages to focus on the future, targeting profitability by 2022.

Remember the big acquisition deals in the days before the virus? Facebook just made one of those - it bought the 'internet’s favorite GIF library' - but people are already worried it's a data play.

Podcast:

John Burn-Murdoch has been at the forefront of the FT's famous coronavirus trajectory trackers. He talks about the challenges of working with data this complex, how the FT’s approach to trajectory charts has evolved throughout the crisis, and more.