Source: www.insideradio.com, August 2019
New data casts a dark shadow over the status of daily newspapers. From 2008 to 2018, newsroom employment dropped 25%, based on an analysis of new survey data released by the Pew Research Center. In addition, the number of employees at newspapers—as well as radio newsrooms—dropped from 114,000 in 2008 to 86,000 last year.
The U.S. newspaper sector saw the biggest drop in staff, from 71,000 employees in 2008 to a paltry 38,000 in 2018, a 47% dip. Broadcast TV newsroom employee levels remain relatively stable at about 28,000 between 2008 and 2018; while radio newsrooms lost more than a quarter of their employees, from 4,600 workers to 3,400 in 2018.
The digital-native sector is the only area to experience significant growth over the past decade, Pew reports, with the number of employees increasing 82%, from 7,400 workers in 2008 to 13,500 in 2018.
The statistics come six weeks after New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet predicted that “most local newspapers are going to die in the next five years,” the Pew report notes. “The greatest crisis in American journalism is the death of local news,” Baquet said at the International News Media Association World Congress in New York City in May. “I don’t know what the answer is. Their economic model is gone.”
