A number of journalists with the Leader say they were laid off Thursday, including political reporter Hannah Pinksi, sports reporter Jared Peck, and enterprise reporter Alex Acquisto.
The move is reportedly part of a broader corporate restructuring by the paper's parent company, McClatchy.
Council member Emma Curtis called the layoffs a "devastating loss" for Kentucky and a symptom of the move toward the "corporatization" of the news media.
"McClatchy decided, hey, you know what? It's actually better if we invest in a shift toward AI content, toward news that flares people up, gets people angry. It provokes the worst in us rather than focusing on fact-based, local journalism," she said. "It's making us dumber. We're all worse for it."
Louisville Public Media reported that the Leader now has just two reporters tasked with covering city and state government.
WUKY reached out to Herald-Leader Editor Jeremy Chisenhall but did not yet receive a response.