Yahoo News Satirist Andy Borowitz Out at The New Yorker Amid Cost Cuts
In a sign of how serious the cost-cutting efforts are at Condé Nast, The New Yorker has parted ways with longtime contributor and satirist Andy Borowitz.
The humorist acknowledged the cuts on his Facebook page. “Dear readers, IF I MAY BE SERIOUS: Because of its financial difficulties, The New Yorker has been forced to cut costs. As a result, it has decided to stop publishing The Borowitz Report,” he wrote. “I want to thank my colleagues at The New Yorker who have made writing for it such an honor for the past 25 years. And I want to thank you, my readers, for your incredible enthusiasm and support. You’re the reason I do what I do, and when I figure out what I want to do next, you’ll be the first to know.”
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Borowitz, who has written for the magazine since 1998, has penned his satirical column the Borowitz Report since 2001, and for The New Yorker since 2012, when the publication acquired it.
His satirical take on the news has been a staple for the magazine, and he has participated in events like The New Yorker Festival, which sought to bring the tone and tenor of his column to the real world. In the last New York Festival he interviewed “Weird Al” Yankovic on stage.
“Andy Borowitz has been making us laugh for decades with his many and varied contributions to The New Yorker and we are immensely grateful for that,” a New Yorker spokesperson told THR. “For years, we’ve had the pleasure and privilege of publishing The Borowitz Report, which has helped our readers—and all of us—find levity in particularly dark times. We know that Andy will keep cracking us up in new and surprising ways for a long time to come.”
While his New Yorker column is where many people read his work most frequently, he is also an author, having written a number of books (his most recent tome Profiles in Ignorance – How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber came out last year), and has worked as a stand-up comedian and TV personality.
But he also has had a successful career in Hollywood, co-creating the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (as well as its 2022 Peacock reboot Bel-Air) with his ex-wife Susan Borowitz and writing for shows like The Facts of Life and Square Pegs.
Condé Nast is undergoing layoffs across the company, with CEO Roger Lynch telling employees last month that hundreds of staffers, or about 5 percent of the company, will be let go. The New Yorker, which has historically largely avoided cutting costs at the company, was among the first titles hit.
The company also parted ways with former Condé Nast Entertainment president Agnes Chu. Vanity Fair, another Condé Nast publication, is also expected to be hit with cuts.
The exit of Borowitz (among other long-tenured staffers) suggests that as the Newhouse-owned magazine giant trims down to meet the times (“Our audiences are changing, technology is changing, and what advertisers want from us is changing,” Lynch told employees. “With all of this change surrounding us, the only certain mistake is to not change ourselves”) there will be no sacred cows.
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