> Newspaper newsroom employment fell 57% between 2008 and 2020, from roughly 71,000 jobs to about 31,000. At the same time, the number of digital-native newsroom employees rose 144%, from 7,400 workers in 2008 to about 18,000 in 2020.
So we are going from 78k to about 49k, a drop of almost 40%. It would be interesting to see a finer grained breakdown by type of jobs.
https://www.rebuildlocalnews.org/new-local-journalist-index-...
(Measured as local journalist equivalent per 100,000 people.)
I have some journalists (for a local newspaper) in my circle of friends and they all complain there's no 'newsroom' anymore for most (dutch) newspapers. All journalists now are supposed to 'self-redact' and their copy is just pasted into the newspaper without anybody else looking at it.
Lots of 'journalists' are freelancers who just send in their piece. Even those often get published with minimal oversight. There just isn't enough money to have a redaction.
Fact-checking is(or should be) done by the one writing the piece. So personal biases are hardly ever caught.
Admitted, all these stories are for a small local newspaper with very tight budgets. But according to my friends it's the same everywhere when they speak to their friends, and even the big national newspapers here have very minimal supporting personnel.
It's no wonder the world polarizes.
Historically, public/mass news services were dependent on adverts or classifieds to pay for their running. That business has been consumed by ad tech.
YouTube has become a source for journalism now, but the viability of newspapers and local beats has reduced.
They aren't funded exclusively by subscribers because that would exclude a source of revenue that enables cheaper subscriptions. But you can have no ads for a reasonable premium.
My reaction was a little different. I said "that's it? Only 60%?"
Accuracy is actually MOST important when strong feelings are involved. If we're talking about what time to eat lunch 'noonish' is good enough. If we're talking about about how many people died in a tragedy exact numbers help prevent misinformation, hyperbole, and panic from driving everyone into a frenzy.
That was a scary number so I Googled it. You should always check scary numbers. It's misleading.
It's true that newspaper newsroom jobs fell 57% (from roughly 71,000 to 31,000 jobs) over that period. However, newsroom employment across all mediums fell by only 26% (from 114,000 to 85,000).
A lot of hose jobs went digital, they didn't just disappear.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/13/u-s-newsr...