Posted on 12/23/2011 6:13:59 PM PST by La Lydia
The number of jobs eliminated in the newspaper industry rose by nearly 30% in 2011 from the prior year, according to the blog that has been tracking the human toll on the industry for the last five years. Meanwhile, a separate analysis confirms what most of us already suspected: The proportion of cutbacks was higher in newsrooms than it was for the industry as a whole ...
First, let’s take a look at the surprising surge of job cuts in 2011, a year that many newspaper people had hoped would be a time of relative stability after five years of successive revenue declines. Instead of steadying, advertising sales slid throughout 2011 and likely will come in at less than half of the record $49.4 billion achieved as recently as 2005. As publishers scrambled to bring costs in line with diminishing revenues, 3,775+ newspaper jobs were eliminated in 2011, according to Erica Smith, the author of the Paper Cuts blog. The toll this year is nearly 30% greater than 2,920+ cuts Smith reported in 2010. ... it is fair to conclude her statistics understate the number of people who have lost their jobs. But the trend she faithfully has been reporting is unmistakable.
Since Smith began her running count of publishing layoffs in the middle of 2007, 39,806+ newspaper jobs have been eliminated. This represents 11% of the all the jobs in an industry that, according to the Census Bureau, employed 360,633 individuals in 2007.
The worst newspaper layoffs occurred in 2008 and 2009, when, respectively, 15,993+ and 14,285+ pink slips were issued. Newspaper ad sales, the primary source of industry revenues, plunged 17% in 2008 and 27% in 2009, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
While the layoff rate dropped to 2,920+ in 2010, things went in the wrong direction this year, as the rate surged to 3,775+ jobs with two weeks left on the calendar (though most publishers presumably will hold their fire over the holidays)...
Bunches of jobs have been eliminated over the years as publishers consolidated production in shared facilities or outsourced such functions as ad production, call centers and even copyediting and page make-up. Nowhere has the toll been higher than in newsrooms, where staffing has slipped each year since 2005 to successively new modern-day lows.
Nearly 1 in 3 newsroom jobs have been eliminated since the number of journalists peaked at 56,900 in 1989, according to an annual survey by the American Society of News Editors. At the end of 2010, only 41,600 scribes were left on the industry’s payrolls...
This also means (as illustrated below) that newsroom staffing now is at the lowest level since the ASNE inaugurated its newsroom census in 1978...
When will the "paper of record" be no more?
That's what I'm waiting for.
Who’s got the DinosaurMedia Deathwatch Ping List?
Hey MSM, you made your choice of ideology quite a while back. Live with it, and choke on it.
Nobody needs to read your left-wing crap anymore. Too much real, balanced news and information not only from U.S. sources, but foreign sources as well.
We are keeping an eye on the internet — for Obama to make his FCC grab on information flow there. Just pray he does not get a second term.
Ping
Ah. But the question is - did they surge unexpectedly?
Finally, some good news.
If we can just prevent Zer0 and the Rats from giving 'em the government subsidies that they been whining for until we get a Republican Congress and President, Maybe they'll go bankrupt.
Craigslist, eBay, Autotrader, and the MLS have kicked the newspaper classified ads in the ‘nads. Layer on the political bias issues made apparent by the Internet, and you have the perfect storm of Internet Death for newspapers.
Pretty sure that is abs.
Whoops, I think I meant abb, who has already been pinged to the thread.
/johnny
Not good news if you are in favor of keeping government in check.
In other news, college students all over America are dropping the ‘Journalism’ major due to poor job prospects...
C'mon. The sole of goal of newspapers today is to keep supporters of small government in check. Everything else, including profits, is an afterthought compared to that goal.
The conservative view is that of the founding fathers that viewed newspapers as keeping government in check. The problem you speak about is newspapers that have not kept with that responsibility.
We need newspapers. We need newspapers to be responsible. Agreed?
ping
I live in a town of 80,000 people. Our local paper ten years ago was decidedly biased leftward, in both the news that was selected to report, and the editorial page.
There has been a gradual, but noticeable migration toward the center-right by the editorial page editor. The news reporting still displays significant liberal bias, I think because a small town paper has to rely on the AP. As newsroom jobs get cut, there has to be more reliance on the AP and their ilk.
Our area consistently votes 65% Republican, yet the news bias insults us daily. The move toward the right by the editorial page I think is keeping them viable.
They're almost to the point where you can begin to ignore them without much effort. We still have the New York Slimes, Boston Blob, Washington ComPost, Useless Today and several others to go, but even these are well on their way and Obamanomics will eventually work its magic on them as well. Of course, Nitwork News, Magazines, Hollyweird, Pop Music and even Billboards are dropping. That means that things are looking up!
Great job these last 5 years eliminating all those newspaper jobs..Now, it’s time to start eliminating some newspapers..
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