Jared Kushner’s bad week continues as his newspaper begins losing employees
The past week of Jared Kushner’s life has been going rather poorly for him. It was revealed that the FBI is investigating his actions in relation to Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, and that he was trying to set up some kind of secret communications channel with the Russians. As we previously reported, he’s now hinting that he might exit the White House in July (link). But it’s not clear how much of his personal business empire might be left waiting for him.
Kushner’s main real estate holding, an office building located at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City, has long been notoriously underwater financially. And now comes word that the New York Observer, which he bought awhile back, is hitting hard times as well (he claims it’s now in a blind trust, but the Trump family’s blind trust claims have proven sketchy). At this point the former print newspaper is strictly an online publication, so it shouldn’t be facing the same hardships that print news media has been facing. But nonetheless, the Observer announced the layoffs of four key writers today (link).
It’s difficult to determine what percentage of the Observer’s editorial staff these layoffs constitute. Its “About” page lists nine “Editorial Staff” along with ten “Writers and Editors.” Everyone beyond that is listed as merely “Contributing” which suggests they’re not full timers. If there are indeed nineteen full time writers, then the Observer has most than twenty percent of its full time writing staff today.
According to Alexa, which is an imperfect but decent estimate of any given website’s popularity, the Observer has seen its traffic levels fall off a cliff since Donald Trump took office in January (link). It’s unclear how much of that may be due to Jared Kushner no longer being in charge as its publisher, and how much of it may be due to growing public disgust at the Trump family and boycotts of its businesses. But either way, if Kushner is thinking about returning to his business life, he might to hurry – while his newspaper exists for him to go back to. Follow Palmer Report on Facebook and Twitter.
