On Thursday, a combined 23 guild journalists from the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and Bradenton Herald were laid off by our parent company McClatchy.

After more than a century of operation, this layoff will leave the Miami Herald without a city hall reporter at the paper’s namesake, meaning there will be no dedicated reporter to hold Miami’s local government accountable. In Bradenton, there will be no one to report on local government at the city and county level.

It also guts the entire writing staff at El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald’s sister paper that has doggedly covered majority-Latino Miami-Dade County in Spanish for decades.

We’re losing a superstar sports writer with three-plus decades of experience who paved the way for women in sports coverage, an entire slate of young reporters just starting their careers in local news and our race and culture reporter who told important stories that have long been ignored in our community.

As our audience asks for more vertical video, McClatchy cut the people who make it — our only female photographer, our entire audience team and our sole video producer. Bradenton Herald lost its only photographer in the newsroom. With this layoff, we lose all reporters covering an entire South Florida county, Broward.

This layoff upends the lives of our journalists. It also affects their families, some who rely on their Herald loved ones to pay tuition, medical costs, and bills. The proceeds of this fundraiser will go towards helping our laid-off colleagues rebuild after this unexpected news.