The decline of local news in the United States is speeding up despite attention paid to the issue, to the point where the nation has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005.
An average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week in 2023 compared to two per week the previous year, a reflection of an ever-worsening advertising climate, according to a Northwestern University study. Most are weekly publications, in areas with few or no other sources for news.
The News-Register, a news publication serving Yamhill County, Oregon, has announced several measures to fight a “broken publishing business model,” in the words of Jeb Bladine, president and publisher of the News-Register.
These changes will take place early in 2024. According to Bladine, the News-Register is planning:
Reduced print publication — one of its twice-weekly print publications will be eliminated, reducing costs for production, printing and mailing, and opening up press time for outside clients
Smaller newspaper page size — the printed newspaper page size will have a 25% reduction, a move that aligns with reader requests for a smaller newspaper; additionally, there will be a doubling of the page-count for single-section press capacity
Increased digital publication — the newspaper will expand to three digital “e-editions” each week
It’s not just us little guys dependent on local ad revenue.
The Los Angeles Times said it planned to lay off at least 115 employees, more than 20% of the newsroom, in one of the largest staff cuts in the newspaper’s 143-year history.
The announcement came after the LA Times Guild walked off the job to protest the imminent layoffs, the institution’s first ever newsroom union work stoppage.
Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West, which encompasses the Times’ union, called it a “dark day.” He said at least 94 union members would be let go.
“Many departments and clusters across the newsroom will be heavily hit,” Pearce said in a statement. “This total, while devastating, is nonetheless far lower than the number of layoffs the bargaining committee was expecting last week.”
Layoffs and buyouts have hit a wide swath of the news industry over the past year. The Washington Post, NPR, CNN and Vox Media are among the many companies hit.
An estimated 2,681 news industry jobs were lost through the end of November, according to the employment firm of Challenger, Gray and Christmas. That was more than the full years of 2022 and 2021.
The latest round of job cutting at the Los Angeles Times comes after more than 70 positions were eliminated in 2023 — about 13% of the newsroom.
Black Press Ltd., the owner of dozens of community newspapers across Western Canada and own local publisher Sound Publishing, said it had entered creditor protection, secured a tentative sale of the company and that founder David Black who founded Black Press in 1975 is retiring.
The company publishes 150 daily and weekly newspapers throughout western Canada, magazines and websites including the Abbotsford News, Surrey Now-Leader and Yukon News.
Black Press also owns local Sound Publishing, who publishes The Everett Daily Herald, Bellevue Reporter and Seattle Weekly, among other newspapers throughout the Puget Sound and Alaska. Black Press also publishes Hawaii’s largest daily paper, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
At its current pace, the country will hit 3,000 newspapers closed in two decades sometime this year, with just under 6,000 remaining. At the same time, 43,000 newspaper journalists lost jobs, most of them at daily publications, with the advertising market collapsing.
While digital outlets have emerged to fill some voids, they’re closing at roughly the same rate as new ones start. There is talk of public financing helping the industry, and more philanthropic money is coming in, but none of that has changed the trajectory.
Few media outlets are immune from financial concerns. The Washington Post said it needed to cut 240 jobs through voluntary buyouts, the website Jezebel said that it was closing, NPR is laying off employees, and The Associated Press began soliciting donations from readers.
The problems of local news, however, are like a slow drip that has affected every corner of the country.
There are 204 counties in the United States with no local news outlet, and 1,562 with only one, usually a weekly newspaper. That’s more than half of the nation’s 3,143 counties.
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