The “apocalyptic” state of American journalism

Are we witnessing the death throes of American journalism? It certainly looks that way in light of the latest “apocalyptic” round of lay-offs, said Alex Pareene in the Columbia Journalism Review. More than 1,000 people have just lost their jobs in a wave of cuts at Buzzfeed, at the Gannett newspaper group and at Verizon Media Group, which includes Huffpost and Yahoo. The redundancies at such Gannett publications as The Arizona Republic and The Indianapolis Star were not that surprising: we “already knew that local newspapers were near the bottom of their death spirals, running with skeleton crews as hedge funds bleed them dry”. But digital outlets were “supposed to have been the survivors”. Instead, Buzzfeed has shed 15% of its staff, including its national desk; Huffpost has axed its opinion section. So much for websites picking up the journalism torch from print newspapers.

“The problem is not audience,” said Ben Mathis-lilley on Slate. There’s a greater appetite for news than ever. The problem is that it has become increasingly hard for news outlets to make any money, because almost all advertising spending is now going to Facebook and Google. One can understand why. “If you want to, say, sell shoes to 25-year-old men who are interested in both basketball and high fashion,” it makes sense to advertise through those two tech giants, who can target that exact demographic for you, rather than individually purchasing ads on different sites and publications. Buzzfeed has fought this trend harder than anyone, said Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times. A “relentlessly experimental innovator”, it has used every trick in the book to maximise its audience, creating image-led, shareable content tailored to the social media age. If even Buzzfeed can’t make it work, the prospects for the US media are truly bleak. It’s a “democratic emergency in the making, with no end in sight”.

So what’s the solution? Individual actions by consumers or entrepreneurs won’t be enough, said Paul Blest on Splinternews.com. We’re going to need a more collective response “if we’re going to have any hope of saving this dying mammoth”. One answer would be to change the law to force tech giants to redistribute ad money to news outlets whose content they use. Another would be to introduce public funding for journalism – a study last year showed that local government costs go up when local papers shut down, with no watchdogs keeping an eye on public officials. New Jersey has taken a “miniscule” step towards that by pledging $5m to fund local news, said Alex Shephard in The New Republic. But there is no momentum at a federal level for such funding, or for any other meaningful steps to help this ailing industry. “We can only hope that, once there is a plan in place to save US journalism, The New York Times and The Washington Post aren’t the only ones around to report on it.”