The news industry is in a 'Death Spiral'

Massive layoffs and draconian budget cuts are gutting the industry.

Credit: The New Yorker

In case you missed it …

If you’ve been following the news lately, the menu has included the ongoing furor over the U.S.-Mexico border mess, Tucker Carlson’s love letters from Russia, the latest five-alarm panic about Trumpian ‘threats to democracy,’ and President Biden’s circadian drifts into La La Land. 

What you’ve probably missed — because anchors and columnists consciously avoid it — is what’s happening to the news business itself. Massive layoffs, voluntary buyouts and draconian budget cuts are prompting what’s being called a “Death Spiral” within the industry.

Over the past 13 months, more than 20,000 staffers have been axed from newsrooms and studios across the country. Other longtime journalists, including dozens of prominent editors and media execs, have read the tea leaves and are exiting voluntarily.

The cataclysm is rocking the Fourth Estate. Pink slips are littering newsroom floors nationwide, from powerful media conglomerates to major dailies to fledgling digital platforms. According to Politico, more than 500 journalists were laid off last month alone.

In its January 30 issue, The Atlantic featured an article with this daunting headline …

Perhaps The Atlantic, among the snootiest of elitist publications, is echoing its already self-fulfilled prophecy: the monthly laid off 68 employees in 2020. Its owner, Emerson Collective, has been losing money on The Atlantic for years.

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The Body Count

A quick look at the media cuts since January 2023 … 

LA Times, Sports Illustrated and Washington Post

Last week, the Los Angeles Times dismissed 115 journalists, including most of its Sports staff and, incredibly, its D.C. news bureau during an election year.

This round of cuts follows 74 staffers who were let go in 2023. Over the past 13 months, the Times newsroom has been gutted by 35 percent. Three top editors, including the executive editor Kevin Merida, resigned just before last week’s announcement.

The Times plans to shut down its main downtown printing plant sometime this year. It will continue printing through a shared facility with the Southern California News Group

Sports Illustrated, for 70-plus years the shining beacon of sports reporting, terminated most of its staff on Jan. 18. Judgment day followed accusations last November that SI was using Artificial Intelligence and fake writers to produce articles.

The Arena Group, SI’s corporate owner, denied those allegations. Arena also promises SI will continue publishing.

Stay tuned.

(Hey, at least the 2024 Swimsuit Issue is already out!)

Then there’s the Washington Post.

Late last year, 240 Post staffers took “voluntary buyouts.” Among those cleaning out their offices were columnist Greg Sargent and senior editor Marc Fisher, who had been with the paper for 35 years. The buyouts followed an angry one-day protest in November by unionized WaPo “Posters” (as the newsroom staff like to call themselves).

The Post is bleeding money. It is expected to lose $100 million in revenue this year.

Even gazillionaire owner Jeff Bezos doesn’t like losing that much pocket change.

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A Steady Decline

Corporate news — often referred to as “Mainstream Media” (MSM) — has been in decline for decades, largely because its traditional ad-based business model has aged into an anachronism.

In the ‘90s, the average Sunday newspaper weighed about 8 pounds. Today, it weighs about the same as a loaf of bread, if it exists at all. Think for a second … how often today do you see a newspaper lying in a driveway or doorstep?

The game-changer, as it has been for all of society, has been the Internet and the rise of information tech.

In the ‘90s, the average Sunday newspaper weighed about 8 pounds. Today, it weighs about the same as a loaf of bread, if it exists at all.

Over a decade, from roughly 2000-2010, readers and viewers migrated en masse from newsprint and cable news to online delivery. Advertisers followed their migration, spawning a slew of startup online news sites in the mid-2000s.

It also prompted a radical rethinking in revenue strategy: from the traditional ad-based revenue model to subscriber-based distribution.

The switch was exacerbated when tech giants Google and Facebook began devouring advertising dollars, leaving corporate media scrambling for audiences and a new plan. Many searched for the silver bullet cure, but never found it.

However, corporate news also is guilty of multiple self-inflicted wounds.

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Elephant in the Room: Public Trust

According to Forbes, the reasons for the recent media struggles include …

… challenging economic headwinds … inflation … a sluggish ad economy … shifts in consumer behavior … less than robust subscriber counts … reorganization … ongoing adjustments post-Covid … advances in technology such as AI … and placating Wall Street investors. 

Less than robust subscriber counts? Placating Wall Street investors?

Ironically, Forbes didn’t address the elephant sitting in the boardroom that corporate media are either too scared or tone-deaf to admit: an erosion of public trust. 

Large segments of the American population simply no longer believe in MSM. Conservatives have long been dubious of cable news and remain loyal to Fox News, which caters to their political leanings.

Gallup poll (7/8/22): Courtesy of Axios

But recently other news consumers also have been abandoning their “most trusted sources.” An October 2023 Gallup poll showed a decline of 12 points in media “trust” among Democrats (from 70 to 58 percent) over the previous year. Trust among independents now stands at 29 percent, a 50-year low.

Even ABC’s World News Tonight, the highest-rated of all network news programs, saw a 12 percent decline in the key adult 25-54 demographic in 2023, according to Variety.

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“Fake News”

Misinformation … disinformation … malinformation … are sometimes identified as “fake news.”

While the “fake news” label is overblown and frivolous, inaccuracy, bias and hypocrisy are not.

MSM has been fallible for many years. However, the lowering of journalistic standards has increased in frequency and amplitude over the past decade.

It’s easy to blame social media — Twitter/X, Facebook, TikTok — for having the loudest voices in spreading wildfires in the national discourse. But too often they’re simply echo chambers for incompetent and spurious reportage.

Media malpractice (i.e. “shitshows”) include — coverage of the 2016 election, the shambolic three-year Russiagate scandal,¹ the 2020 election denial, COVID conspiracies, Fox News’ devastating $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and questions about the president’s mental competence.

Standing at the center of many of these storms is former President Donald J. Trump, unquestionably the most divisive figure of the 21st century. For eight years he has been considered “ratings gold” for Liberal outlets.

However, could it be that, in part, viewers and readers are disavowing the news as a result of “Trump fatigue?”

It’s worth asking.

Tone Deafness

Tim Franklin is the senior associate dean at Northwestern’s Medill Journalism School, considered among the elite of the country’s “J” Schools. In an interview, Franklin commented on the mounting media layoffs with a breathtakingly tone-deaf statement…

“What concerns me is with all of these losses and this loss of coverage is that it’s only going to fuel more misinformation and disinformation into communities,” Franklin said. “How do you then combat that challenge?”

Perhaps Dean Franklin hasn’t been paying attention — that the media are cratering largely because of the dissonance created by its own information biases and partisanship. Consumers no longer know who or what to believe, so they stopped believing everybody.

The Hartford Courant, founded in 1764, is the nation’s longest-standing daily newspaper.

Will there be a corporate news “extinction-level event” in 2024?

Stay tuned … if you still can.

(Note: My father was a lifer with the Associated Press (1937-87). As a child, I delivered the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from my bicycle. I majored in Journalism in college, and later became a journalist for the San Diego Union. My byline has appeared in a dozen magazines and periodicals.)

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Jim Geschke was inducted into the prestigious Marquis Who’s Who Registry in 2021.

1. This links to Jeff Gerth’s four-part series in the Columbia Journalism Review published in Jan. 2023 which examines media coverage of the House of Representatives’ three-year investigation of possible Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election, now known as the “Russiagate scandal.” The 24,000-word analysis is an exhaustive and highly critical look at how the media covered the unfolding of the investigation, which ended up with the infamous and inconclusive “Mueller Report” in 2019.