Andy Borowitz‘s satirical column in The New Yorker is coming to an end, as the publication has dropped the feature as part of cost cutting.
Borowitz wrote on Facebook that “because of financial difficulties, The New Yorker has been forced to cut costs. As a result, it has decided to stop publishing The Borowitz Report. 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.”
The end of The Borowitz Report feature in The New Yorker comes amid company-wide layoffs at parent Condé Nast. Last month, the company announced that it was cutting 5% of its staff as advertising has slowed. Its CEO, Roger Lynch, wrote to staffers that they were in an “industry that is changing” and that they needed to ensure that they could “grow our business profitably.”
Borowitz created the sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and by the early 2000s, he had gained notoriety for his daily satire site The Borowitz Report. The content was syndicated until The New Yorker acquired the site in 2012, with the slogan “not the news” irreverent headlines like the recent George Santos To Spend More Time With Imaginary Family. He had been a contributor to the publication before then.
A New Yorker spokesperson said, “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. 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.”