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A retired friend recently asked me if I was planning on retiring anytime soon. That was the right question. I explained that while I had thought about retiring, I didn’t really have any plans to do so, either anytime soon.
But I added. “I’m in a job where I might retire, so that choice may not be up to me.”
no kidding. Last year alone, two newspapers that had been publishing the initiative every week closed down, and two others stopped publishing the initiative for the first time in nearly 25 years due to severe budget cuts.
That is the current state of newspapers today. A study by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism found that 360 U.S. newspapers closed their doors from the start of the coronavirus pandemic to mid-2022.
If this closure rate continued through January of this year, approximately 150 more businesses would have closed since then. This means that approximately 3,000 newspapers, a quarter of all newspapers in the United States, have ceased publication since 2005.
Because of this plunder, print journalists became as rare as coal miners. U.S. newspaper employment fell from 71,000 in 2008 to 31,000 in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. The free fall was slightly better than coal mining, which has lost 46,000 jobs since 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It’s not just us black wretches who are shaking with words. Editors of digital and print magazines are also keeping their heads down in cubicles in their offices.
For example, Ezra Klein wrote in a January 21 newspaper: new york timesin the last few months.”sports illustrated Web news giants BuzzFeed and Jezebel are closing their doors, while HuffPo, Vice and FiveThirtyEight have reduced headcount and reach.
And all continue to lose readers, advertising, and revenue. The only thing that journalism in all its forms seems to be good at these days is shedding money. Ideas for stemming the tide are many, varied, and inexpensive. Actual solutions are rare, difficult, and expensive.
Ten years ago, the most powerful people seemed to be white-knight billionaires who wanted their hands on American journalism’s trophies. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (washington post), biotech investor Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong (Los Angeles Times), software king Marc Benioff (time) spent a total of $940 million to acquire the shiny jewel.
But by mid-January 2024, these Midas were also reduced to paste.by timesthe trio funneled hundreds of millions more into the jet-black rat hole before putting their checkbooks back in their pockets.
Not even newspaper royalty is spared: Rupert Murdoch’s February 1 wall street journal The company has fired 20 journalists from its Washington, D.C., bureau.
“Wealth does not protect owners from the serious challenges plaguing many media companies,” said a longtime observer. times“And it turns out that being a billionaire is not a predictor of solving those problems.”
The Northwestern’s Nov. 16, 2023 “State of Local News” report noted that this problem is particularly acute in rural America.
“Residents in more than half of U.S. counties have no or very limited access to trusted local news sources, whether print, digital, or broadcast,” the report explained. Additionally, “204 counties have no local news outlets, and 1,562 counties have only one remaining local news source, which is always a weekly newspaper.”
And regardless of their professionalism or seriousness, new digital alternatives are not a universal solution. Because “many digital startups struggle to attract enough subscribers and funding to achieve long-term sustainability,” the report adds.
But that doesn’t mean newspapers can’t go digital.Many people have, and there are more I headed that way. A report from a year ago found that 42 of the 100 largest newspapers publish print editions less than six times a week, and 11 of them publish print editions once or twice a week. “Only.”
That future of less ink, more electronics, and fewer journalists seems as irreversible as my age.
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