Read this and this to see why Insider is a fluffy news site.

Business Insider to lay off 8% of staffers: ‘We’re saying goodbye to wonderful colleagues’ (msn.com)

They join Time, Los Angeles Times, and Sports Illustrated, in laying off a lot of staff in the past week. Journalists are not producing a product that customers want to buy. They don’t understand that though.

• Forbes, which is now a China-based publications, is laying off 3%.
• Bloomberg Businessweek is no longer a weekly but a monthly.
• The owner of Popular Science, and Field and Stream, laid off 80 staff.

The business model of the news side of media has been large staffs of reporters and editors (think the local newspaper monopoly) or a staff of talking heads (the local TV news model). Eventually, the “local” outlets became consolidated into chains of papers and TV stations, even though they may appear to the casual reader or viewer as being a local outfit.

Today, many reporters have left the old model – and are now independent journalists, seeking out and publishing their works online – on social media and through web sites. Many have paid subscriptions and others use the Pateron-style donation model. These appear to be the new business model for future journalism and show that people are willing to pay for actual value.

But few journalists get this, just yet, and want to keep the existing model – even seeking government subsidies (in some cases) or a wealthy benefactor to keep their old school models alive.