Last week was a particularly rough one for public radio, with three organizations announcing layoffs and show cancellations due to economic strain and budget shortfalls caused by the pandemic.

On Wednesday, American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio said it was laying off 28 staffers, ending The Hilarious World of Depression podcast and ending production of Live From Here.

Soon after that, Chicago Public Media also announced layoffs, noting that it was letting go of 12 staffers and that it was ending production of Sound Opinions.

The next day, Boston-based WBUR announced it, too, was making cuts. The station is laying off over 10 percent of its staff, totalling 29 workers, and it’s also ending production on two shows: Kind World, which will wrap its run in July, and Only a Game, its long-running weekly sports magazine program.

(WBUR also announced that Modern Love, its highly popular podcast produced in partnership with The New York Times, is being brought fully in-house by the Times. A bit of separate thing; more on that in a bit.)

Paced so close together, these developments paint a brutal picture of how the pandemic is affecting public radio, which has already seen regular furloughs both within NPR and at stations across the country. If you’re curious about the timing for these three announcements, consider the fiscal calendar.

One of the biggest stations in the public radio system, WBUR has long been notable for its alumni network of podcast talents — among them The New York Times’ Lisa Tobin as well as Rococo Punch’s Jessica Alpert and John Perrotti, whom I should note I work with on my podcast — as well as its myriad podcast efforts over the years, which include current programs like Endless Thread and Circle Round along with older shows like Last Seen and Edge of Fame. All of which is to say that I’m uniquely interested in the context, substance, and possible consequences of the cuts at WBUR.

Three things stood out to me. First, as WBUR’s own reporting noted, the announcements came shortly after the station reached its first tentative collective bargaining agreement with the union representing reporters and producers — but before it was finalized.

Secondly, the cuts at WBUR ran deep, with several newsroom leaders laid off as part of the restructure, including executive news director Tom Melville, digital managing director John Davidow, and director of operations and production Peter Lydotes. But as WBUR’s report also noted, 7 of the 8 staffers being brought up to new leadership roles are white, stark optics at a time where newsrooms across the country are publicly reckoning with issues of racial equity.

Finally, all three of the shows that WBUR is losing are significant in their own ways. Since the announcement, I’ve heard from multiple people about how Only a Game was an exceptionally generous gate-keeping production, serving as a reliable source of first-story credits for young producers looking to start building a resume. Kind World is a fascinating story: a show with a humanist ethos hosted by two women of color, Andrea Asuaje and Yasmin Amer, the podcast started out as an experimental project in 2012 and would go on to win multiple awards across its run.

And then there’s Modern Love, which some view as WBUR’s flagship podcast. That change is different from what’s happening to the other two shows; I’m told that plans for the Times to fully take over the podcast have been in the works for a while and that the announcement was just lumped in together with these broader shakeups. But its extraction from WBUR, combined with cessation of Kind Word and Only a Game, collectively contribute to a broader question regarding the organization’s position: Acknowledging that everything’s a mess in the media business right now due to the pandemic, how does WBUR think about its future in the wake of all these cuts?

I had the opportunity to speak with WBUR CEO and general manager Margaret Low — who stepped into the role in January, replacing Charlie Kravitz — about the cuts late last week, though I should say the conversation came out of a slight miscommunication. Low had jumped on the call thinking that we were primarily going to talk about Modern Love; I had already gotten what I needed on that story. But Low was willing enough to discuss a number of other issues related to the deep restructure, and I appreciated her participation.