Saturday, June 18th, 2016
Stephan: The Decline of Newspapers Trend began in 1990 and has only accelerated as time has gone on. But I think that is only part of the story. What is not discussed is that nothing has really arisen in the vacuum left by shrinking newspapers to replace the role they played in news aggregation and investigative reporting.
Investigative journalism costs money and takes time, and few online publications are able or do make the commitment to do it. Instead what we see in its place is advocacy and disinformation operations. When combined with the degradation of public education, it leaves the U.S. with an electorate too ignorant to make informed judgments about political candidates.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been charting the demise of newspapers, and its latest numbers reveal what many in the industry have been witnessing. Newspaper employment, as of March, had dropped to 183,200, compared with 197,800 working in “Internet publishing and broadcasting.”
An analysis by the Nieman Journalism Lab charts the beginning of the end of newspapers to the dawn of the Internet Age in 1990. That year, newspaper employment hit a peak of 457,800. It is down 60 percent.
Some print publications are dumping paper and going online while keeping many of their reporters, editors and administrative staff.
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Said Nieman, “It’s safe to assume that newspaper jobs will continue to evaporate. Most small and mid-sized metro papers are struggling to find new revenue as print advertising and circulation decline and online advertising fails to make up the difference.”
