for comment on why jobs were cut.

"That website has been a part of my life since I was reading it at 14 years old," Griffith told Business Insider regarding his work on the Vox-owned site Sactown Royalty, which covers the Sacramento Kings basketball team. "Sacramento wouldn't have an NBA team without Sactown Royalty as a rallying point. The community of readers and writers is some of the best in the country, and [Vox] completely stabbed those readers and writers in the back."

Instead of promoting freelancers to full time, companies cut jobs

After Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB5 in September, many labor experts praised the law for prohibiting companies from using freelance workers without giving them benefits like healthcare. Newsom's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Laurato stick around as unpaid "insiders" who could write 35 unpaid articles a year, according to Jessica DeLine, a site manager at the SB Nation site Halo's Heaven.

California's new law bars companies from accepting more than 35 submissions a year from freelancers. DeLine estimates she spent 30 to 40 hours a week on Halo's Heaven including the time she spent watching games. She says she used the money only for car payments but called cultivating a community of Los Angeles Angels fans a "labor of love."

"It was a poorly constructed law, and Vox responded to it very poorly," DeLine said. "There's a whole list of things they did I think they did poorly."

One writer for Golden State of Mind, who requested anonymity because he has another full-time job,