AP laying off 20 video production staffers in further shift to Indian hub

The Associated Press is preparing to lay off 20 U.S.-based video production employees as the news cooperative builds a new multimedia production hub in India, according to the union representing the affected journalists.

The News Media Guild said AP also plans to eliminate 10 photo editing positions in the U.S. and 10 video production jobs in London. A date has not been set for those cuts, according to a report from Poynter.

The restructuring will shift much of AP’s U.S. video production work to Noida, India, where the company is expanding its visual production operation. Union leaders have raised concerns that moving the work overseas could result in the loss of institutional knowledge from journalists who have spent years covering U.S. regions, politics and other specialized subjects.

“They are experts in their region, in their topics, in their abilities to pick and choose what clips should be elevated,” said Kimberlee Kruesi, a breaking news and politics reporter who is acting president of the News Media Guild.

Kruesi said questions remain about how a production operation based outside the U.S. will handle coverage requiring detailed knowledge of American news, geography and government.

News Media Guild Executive Director Tony Winton said AP initially told the union that affected employees would be laid off July 31. The company later moved the date for the 20 U.S. video producers to Friday. The union has not been given a termination date for the photo editors, he said.

AP Executive Editor Julie Pace disclosed plans for the Noida production hub in a June email to employees, saying the company wanted to centralize some production work while expanding its video and photo capabilities. The AP also announced five new video producer hires in India in March 2026.

“Visuals are incredibly important to AP and its future,” Pace wrote. She said the hub would allow AP to increase its production staff while improving speed and quality.

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Pace said AP had previously hired production employees in India to test the labor market and noted that the company already employs staff there in other roles.

AP spokesperson Patrick Maks said the company expects the operation to expand its overall visual production capacity.

“Over 80% of our output today is visual, and we know those formats are increasingly important to our customers and audiences,” Maks said in an emailed statement. He noted that AP has employees in nearly 100 countries, including India.

The restructuring comes as AP has increased its focus on video. Since 2022, the organization has doubled the number of video journalists working in the field in the U.S. Those positions are separate from the production jobs being eliminated.

Kruesi said AP will retain a small number of U.S.-based video production employees, including journalists assigned to specialized beats. The cuts, however, will eliminate much of the production staff responsible for handling general U.S. news video.

The union also said AP has not explained in detail how reporters and visual journalists in the U.S. will coordinate with the new India-based operation.

Video and photo production employees do more than edit material supplied by reporters and photographers, union leaders said. Their work can include locating user-generated video, obtaining government footage, verifying images and communicating with journalists in the field.

Winton cited police body camera and dashboard camera footage as one example. Obtaining such material can require knowledge of state and local public records laws, as well as an understanding of how footage should be verified and attributed.

“To the extent that the knowledge and skills of these individuals who’ve been working in many cases for decades would be summarily replaced by a group of individuals who would not be familiar with all of that context, background and potentially skills — that I think speaks to the risk to quality,” Winton said.

The changes are part of a broader series of staff reductions at AP. The organization eliminated about 8% of its global workforce in 2024. Winton said News Media Guild membership at AP has declined by about 150 since then through layoffs and buyouts.

Earlier this year, about 40 AP employees accepted buyouts and another 20 were laid off.

Other international news organizations have also expanded operations in India. Bloomberg has increased its staff in the country by about 30% during the past three years. Noida, outside New Delhi, is a major center for Indian television news and film production.

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