The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our lives in more ways than we can count.
In addition to lives lost, the economy has tanked, social distancing restrictions have caused restaurants and small businesses to go out of business and time with friends and loved ones has become a rarity.
We’ve now been through a year of this, and the negative effects only continue to appear in new realms.
The one thing that has kept us informed on everything COVID-19 related—the news industry— has been extremely hard hit by this devastating year.
An estimated 37,000 employees at news companies across the United States have either been laid off, furloughed or taken substantial pay cuts in March 2020 alone. Newsrooms are shrinking at hastening rates in a time when news coverage has never been more important. This forces remaining employees to do more work for less pay.
The news media sector had already been struggling to stay afloat before the pandemic began. According to the Pew Research Center, U.S. newspapers have shed half of their newsroom employees since 2008. The way consumers read news has changed over the years, and journalism has adapted to meet the shifts—social media news has become more prevalent, a lot more content is getting digitized, and companies have been finding new ways to diversify their revenue streams with their advertisements.
In a study on news deserts, it was found that the U.S. has lost almost 18,000 newspapers since 2004.
Amid tumultuous times, people continue to turn to the news for crucial information. News industries proved essential for communicating vital public health information throughout the pandemic, and had to cover one of the contentious elections in U.S. history, while also reporting on the numerous historic Black Lives Matter protests and social justice movements.
However, just in 2020, media sector layoffs reached record highs.
It has even been a year of drastic loss for the bigger, better known news companies.
Buzzfeed recently announced a new round of layoffs for the Huffpost newsroom. In 2020, Huffpost’s losses totaled to around $20 million. In efforts to break even this year the company has announced they will be laying off 47 U.S. employees and the full closure of Huffpost Canada.
In October, Gannett, one the largest newspaper chains in the U.S. offered buyouts to all of its 21,000 employees, of which 500 accepted.
The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, National Public Radio, Vice Media, are few of the many other companies that have had to make drastic changes to their newsrooms in order to survive.
Some small community news companies that rely on revenue from local businesses to pay for ads in their papers, have had to close their doors altogether.
The closing of local newspapers is extremely detrimental as they are essential informants in the communities they serve. It poses a grave threat to community civic engagement and health, especially during the pandemic.
A news desert study found that communities lose transparency and accountability when their local newspapers shut down—taxes go up and voter participation drops.
This is happening more so in smaller, more rural communities where local newspapers are dying at disproportionate rates.
In more marginalized communities, local newspapers contribute to the diversification of perspectives in the news. Local news outlets serve as megaphones for groups who are oftentimes silenced, and without them, these people would be left unheard.
The loss of good journalism in this country is a disease. The sad reality is that although the need for news will never die, byt the industry itself just might.
CORRECTION: This story previously misspelled newspaper chain Gannett as Garnett. The web version of this story has been updated to correct the error.
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3 Comments
Local journalism is supremely important to any community- and it’s struggling. And yes, it is happening at a quicker rate in rural areas and areas of marginalized groups. But, I’m having trouble pinpointing the stance the Editorial Board is taking. Is there maybe a public policy decision that would combat this “disease”- perhaps subsidizing local newspapers? Or maybe the government should be buying media time on CNN or MSNBC to present objective news? Regardless of the method, I would have hoped this editorial took a stance on the issue, as opposed to just stating well-accepted facts.
Garnett should be Gannett but if it was spelled correctly you might not get to the linked article which verifies the correct spelling. Thanks for the links.
I am empathetic to the plight of those intelligent hard working journalism students before and after graduation. The free press is more important than most of us appreciate.
The obvious contraction of staff has led to a decline in the effectiveness of the educational aspects of the major media outlets. Coverage also suffers, I think, from the lack of diversity of opinion and the decrease in quality of staff. Only one one these situations seems to exist at The Brown and White.
I support my local Atlanta paper the AJC, but am increasingly more unhappy with the product although on the whole they do good work. Sadly fewer and fewer people choose to do so despite an expanding potential audience.
Ross,
I think the solution is in the hands of the citizens of this country. The majority are getting what they want and it is not reputable journalism. Most seem to want a corroboration of their current beliefs. Ratings and subscriptions tend to determine what gets printed or shown
Government is not the answer. Politics also tends to skew coverage. I am a listener of NPR and affiliates and what started as an independent source of information for those who had limited options his become a source of liberal news and viewpoints. This was alternative news long ago but has become mainstream as time has past. Alternative (minority not minorities) news these days tends to be of the conservative type. By alternative I don’t mean lunatic fringe.
Fighting to stay afloat is The Brown and White’s (B&W) stance and the stance of most concerned individuals. The solution to the problem, as always, is a more difficult task.
The B&W has a captive audience so the concerns for local journalism are probably not the B&W’s concerns but they could provide an answer for the local community as a service.