Newspaper covers in a newsstand in Manhattan, New York, in an archive photo. Photo: EFE
The press crisis does not stop in the United States. Newspapers continue to die at the rate of two per week, while readership is dwindling and advertising revenue plummets. The data comes from a report published on Wednesday, which confirms a trend that has been going on for years and that does not seem to go back.
According to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Communications and Integrated Marketing, areas of the country without a reliable local news source tend to be poorer, older, and less educated than those with better news coverage.
The country had 6,377 newspapers at the end of May, up from 8,891 in 2005, according to the report. While the coronavirus pandemic didn’t cause the showdown that some in the industry feared, 360 publications closed since the end of 2019, all but 24 weekly at the service of small communities.
The work of journalists
An estimated 75,000 reporters worked on newspapers in 2006 and are now 31,000, according to the Northwestern report.
The newspaper’s annual revenue fell from $ 50 billion to $ 21 billion over the same period.
A man reads a newspaper on a street in Cincinnatti, United States. Photo: AP
The driving factors collapse of the advertising model of the sector They haven’t changed. Strengthening the digital news industry in recent years has not been enough to offset general trends, said Penelope Muse Abernathy, visiting professor at Medill and lead author of the report.
Many of the digital-only sites focus on unique topics and are clustered in or near major cities near philanthropic money which provides much of its fundingNo, according to the report.
“Deserted News”
News “deserts” are growing: the report estimates that some 70 million Americans live in a county with no or only a local news organization.
Traditional newspapers, which are printed and distributed seven days a week, are also on the decline.
The report states that 40 of the country’s 100 largest newspapers publish digital versions at least once a week.
The situation is not new. As early as March 2021, a Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) report indicated that the economic crisis coupled with the coronavirus pandemic prompted at least 60 newspapers to close their doors in the United States during the year 2020, as well as three digital media. , five magazines and a radio station. The main reason: drop in advertising revenue.
According to the Pew Research research center, in the second quarter of 2020 newspapers suffered a 42% decline in advertising revenues, a figure in contrast, for example, with the results of the television channel Fox News, which saw its revenues grow41. % during the same period.
CJR magazine also assured it 37,000 media workers were fired on a permanent or temporary basis or suffered salary cuts in 2020, a figure that he considers “imperfect but well calculated”.
As an example, he cited the largest newspaper chain in the country, Gannet, publisher of the USA Today among the other 250 newspapers, in which last October 500 employees accepted an incentive layoff offer launched by the company.
Source: AP and EFE
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