Free Malaysia Today of 11 December 2019 reports that 600 media workers would be out of work by the end of this week - i.e. Friday the 13th 2019, according to an un-named source within the media company.
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2019/12/11/hundreds-to-lose-jobs-this-week-in-latest-media-lay-off/
Whilst Free Malaysia Today did not explicitly identify the media company affected, the caption to a photo included hints that it is the Malay language Utusan Malaysia, a controversial publication said to have strong links or leanings to the United Malaysia National Organisation (UMNO), the dominant political party in the Barisan Nasional coalition which lost the general elections on 9 May 2018.
However, despite the political leanings of the publication - presumably Utusan Malaysia - this supposed loss of 600 media jobs by the end of this week is a blow to the lives of these media workers and their families, and given the dire straits most media in Malaysia and elsewhere are in today, whether print, online, digital or combination of all three platforms and I don't expect that it will be easy for them to find work with media which are still surviving, when the Berjaya Media Berhad (BJMEDIA), which owns The Sun newspaper, is currently classified amongst 22 PN17 (Practice Note 17) on Bursa Malaysia (the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange).
Basically, Bursa Malaysia listed companies classified as PN17 are companies which are in distress and if they are unable to turn around and recover financially, they risk being de-liated.
Also, whilst still profitable, the Star Media Group reported a mere RM250,000 net profit due to owners of the parent in its 3rd Quarter 2019 financial report, compared to RM1.596 million net profit in Q3 2018. Also Star Media Group reported RM5.477 million combined net profit due to owners of the parent in the first nine months of 2019, down 61.3% from RM14.413 million in the first nine months of 2018.
Star Media Group looks like the Titanic as it increasingly took on water and settled lower and lower above the surface until it finally slipped below the waves, unless the management can magically plug the leak and turn around the company in time before the "Titanic" goes down.
So with the media in such dire straits in Malaysia today, it will be tough for those 600 to find work in currently surviving media, especially when more media workers are expected to join the ranks of the unemployed by the first quarter of 2020 - the Wawasan (Vision) 2020 year when Malaysia was supposed to have arrived in the "Exclusive Club of Developed Nations", with a knowledge-based, information-rich, high-income nation with a gross national income per capita of around RM64,000 per annum (or RM5,333 per month). However Vision 2020 has been postponed 10 years to Shared Property Vision 2030.
Free Malaysia Today's article follows below and it isn't pretty:-
Hundreds to lose jobs this week in latest media lay-off
FMT Reporters - December 11, 2019 11:42 AM
PETALING JAYA: Feathers have been ruffled among personnel at a flagship newspaper as a deadline nears for its owners to reveal a list of hundreds of staff to be axed this week, in the latest series of journalist lay-offs.
An internal source with the company, one of Malaysia's largest media-related groups, said some 600 workers would be axed this Friday in the latest retrenchment exercise, half of them from the print daily.
But it said the management had yet to engage with union representatives despite promising to do so in October.
"They have a deadline to come up with a retrenchment list. It's two days away, but unions were not engaged," the source told FMT.
"Labour laws stipulate that those who will be affected must be informed."
It is believed that the hundreds to lose their jobs this time cut across the board, and will have no choice or option to appeal when termination letters are served to them.
The retrenchments, if true, will come amid a spate of media company shutdowns and downsizing exercises in an industry which has seen thousands lose their jobs over the last three years.
On Oct 9, Utusan Malaysia and Kosmo! announced their final appearance at news stands nationwide after publisher Utusan Melayu Bhd went into liquidation.
Early last month, Media Prima, which owns the New Straits Times Press and a slew of television channels, announced job cuts affecting thousands of employees. It said this was part of a "restructuring exercise" to be completed by the first quarter of next year.
The main problem affecting media, not only in Malaysia but also worldwide has been the decline in advertising and circulation revenue as readership and advertising moves from print media to online and digital platforms and where print advertising revenue, whilst still considerable is declining at between eight and 10 times as fast as online and digital advertising revenue is rising, even for media which publishes on print, online and digital platforms. Also, where print platforms enjoyed a relatively exclusive access to advertisements and advertising revenue, once they go online and digital, they face stiff competition for advertising dollar from the likes of Google and Facebook, since the latter reach a much larger number of eyeballs than the online and digital platforms of even the best media organisation does, and with some specialist professional or industry exceptions, advertising is all about reaching the biggest mass audience.
The chart above, courtesy of the Newsppaper Association of America and the Carpe-Diem Blog, shows that newspaper advertising revenue in the U.S. (adjusted for inflation in 2014 dollars) grew steadily from US$50 billion in 1950 to a peak of US$67 billion around 1999, then plunged down to a total of US$19.98 (print + digital) in 2014. It also shows that Google's worldwide advertising revenue surpassed total US newspaper advertising revenue around 2009, whilst Facebook's advertising revenue surpassed US newspaper advertising revenue around 2014.
A developed economy, the U.S. was ahead of Malaysia in 1999, in terms of PC penetration and Internet access and like in Malaysia, Internet access in 1999 was still mostly over dialup connections and most cellular phones were mostly feature phones which supported slow, second-generation (2G) 114 Kbps (killobits per second) GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) data rates in Europe and most of Asia and 115 Kbps speeds of 2G IS-95B Code-division Multiple Access (CDMA) phones in the North America, Latin America and some Asian countries such as South Korea.
Rather interestingly, whilst regarded as an American technology and industry standard developed by the U.S. company Qualcomm as CdmaOne, the theory of Code-division Multiple Access was developed and proposed in the Soviet Union in 1935 by Dmitry Vasiliyevich Ageev, a scientist, educator and radio engineer at the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute of Communications, as part of his PhD thesis.
Anyway, historical aspects aside, feature phones, even today, are hardly the best devices to access news on. However, even by then, media access had already begun to move online sufficiently to begin to make an negative impact on media advertising revenue.
Telekom Malaysia launched Streamyx, its first broadband Internet service in 1999. Streamyx is based on ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) technology which offered a "super fast" speed of 1 Mbps (megabits per second) to subscribers over the same metal wire-pair telephone line into homes and offices. Apart from speeds up to 20 times faster than dialup Internet which ties up the telephone line whilst in use and where users are charged for time connected, a Streamyx connection is always connected whilst the telephone can also be used at the same time. Also, Streamyx subscribers pay a flat monthly fee for the service.
Then in March 2010, Telekom Malaysia launched its Unifi fibre Internet service which is even faster, whilst smartphones were increasingly being used mostly over faster 3G or 3.5G cellular data connections.
And, with 127.7% broadband penetration as of the 2nd quarter of 2019, according to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC/SKMM), over 99.3% of which are cellular broadband connections.
So now, Malaysians can access media reports, personal commentaries and videos anywhere in the world and mostly for free, so no more having to wait for the paper man to throw today's edition of the newspapers over the house gate or of of having to wait to watch the latest news on TV. Instead, if we want to find out how the 12th December general election campaigns are going in the U.K. and find out the outcome tomorrow (12th December 2019) night, or how Donald Trump's impeachment proceedings are progressing, we don't need to wait to read all about it the the Malaysian newspapers (whether print, online or digital), when we can access such news closer to where its happening long before it's reported in our local media, and for free.
Meanwhile, over in the U.S., media organisations have been retrenching workers by the thousands over the past several year.
On 15 July 2019, Business Insider US reported rather extensively and it isn't a pretty sight:-
Business Insider US or 15 July 2019 reports:-
3,000 people have lost their jobs so far this year in a media landslide
Benjamin Goggin, Business Insider US
July 15, 2019
In the last month, layoffs hit have MAD Magazine, Pride Media, Quartz, and Meredith, bringing the total number of media layoffs in 2019 to over 3,000, according to Business Insider's tally.
The latest cuts follow layoff announcements at BuzzFeed, Verizon, Vice Media, McClatchy, Machinima, and Gannett – the largest newspaper publisher in the US.
It is estimated that between 2014 and 2017, some 5,000 media jobs were cut from the market.
Read more stories like this on Business Insider.
The media industry continued to execute large cuts in June as MAD Magazine, Pride Media, and Meredith reduced headcounts.
The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.
The massive cuts so far this year represent a recent trend in media that has seen upstart companies and newspapers alike shrinking and disappearing.
Here are the media jobs that have been lost so far in 2019.
MAD Magazine: Around 10 jobs, July
MAD Magazine laid off around 10 staffers, according to one estimate given to INSIDER by someone close to the situation, amid news that the magazine would cease the production of original content.
Issue 10 will reportedly be the magazine's last issue including new material. The magazine will continue to honor existing subscriptions with issues featuring new covers and recycled material.
It's estimated that hundreds of freelancers will be affected.
Editors Casey Boyd and Dan Telfer were both affected by the layoffs, among other employees.
Jet and Ebony: 15 jobs; June and May
The New York Post reported that at least 15 people were laid off at African-American focused magazines Jet and Ebony.
In May, seven staffers were laid off when parent-company Clear View Group told Ebony staffers that the print edition of the magazine was being suspended, according to the Post.
In June, eight Jet staffers were laid off shortly after Clear View Group told Jet employees that they couldn't pay them for the last pay period in May, according to the Post.
Quartz: 11 jobs; June and January
Quartz, a publication that's focused on data-driven global coverage, laid off four employees in the UK in January and seven employees in June, according to reports from Digiday. The cuts were composed of business-side employees and members of the company's commercial team.
According to Digiday, Quartz is attempting to pivot its business model from making custom commercial content for clients to a subscription-based model.
Quartz's total headcount is reportedly down to 235 from 243 in January.
In July 2018, Quartz was acquired by Japanese media startup Uzabase, and was tasked with handling the company's mobile English-language business subscription service, according to the AP.
Quartz has had traffic struggles according to Comscore, whose data indicates a 50% dropoff in visitors following the publication's acquisition, Digiday reported.
Pride Media and Out Magazine: 10 jobs; June and February
In June, during LGBT pride month, WWD reported that five employees at LGBT media group Pride Media were laid off after a year of drama surrounding payment and funding at the company. The cuts reportedly hit corporate Pride Media staff and Out Magazine editorial staffers.
Five other staffers at Out were reportedly cut in February.
The company, and Out Magazine in particular, had been facing criticism from its journalists who said they hadn't been paid for months.
Just days before the layoffs, Pride Media had received a cash injection from investors after months of promises, Vice News reported.
Meredith: 60 jobs, June 7
The New York Post reported that magazine giant Meredith laid off around 1% of its workforce, 60 employees, in early June months after acquiring Time Inc.
The cuts were primarily at Entertainment Weekly and Traditional Home.
In September, the company laid off 200 people from a variety of lifestyle publications.
A Meredith spokesman told the Post that the cuts came amid "a lot of competition internally for ad dollars."
GateHouse Media: At least 219 jobs, May and January
GateHouse Media, one of the largest local newspaper publishers in the United States, quietly laid off journalists in multiple large rounds throughout the year.
Business Insider confirmed there were at least 60 layoffs at various local newspapers owned by the company at the end of January. The layoffs focused on local sports reporters and photographers, some of whom had worked at their papers for over 30 years.
At the end of May, GateHouse reportedly laid off at least an additional 159 people at newspapers across the country, including reporters, editors, and other staff.
The cuts seemingly began after the $30 million acquisition of Schurz Communications Inc., which immediately resulted in 11 cut jobs at three publications in Maine and Indiana.
After first-quarter losses, other cuts began in May. When Business Insider inquired about the cuts, New Media CEO Mike Reed called them "immaterial." He later told Poynter that layoffs would only number around 10 people.
Reading Eagle: 6 jobs, May 23
Pennsylvania's regional daily newspaper the Reading Eagle announced that it was filing for bankruptcy in May 2019.
The same month, MNG Enterprises said that it would buy the paper and issued a warning that it could lay off all 221 employees, according to a state labor filing cited by The New York Post.
Later, however, a representative of the firm handling the sale of the company, Dirks, Van Essen, Murray & April, said, "We don't know how many people will be retained."
So far, only 6 people have fine laid off.
CNN: 100 jobs, May 6
On May 6 it was reported that more than 100 employees at CNN took buyouts amid corporate restructuring efforts. The buyouts were offered to employees who had hit retirement age, with four weeks of pay for every year of service – potentially providing two years' worth of pay total, according to Deadline.
A CNN representative told Deadline that the buyouts were explicitly not related to layoffs, but the move comes as AT&T – which owns CNN – attempts to restructure billions in debt.
New Orleans Times-Picayune: 161 jobs, May 2
In May, New Orleans' Times-Picayune was acquired by one of its competitors, The Advocate. All 161 employees of the Times-Picayune were laid off.
The Times-Picayune had long been the city's paper of record and had won numerous Pulitzer Prize awards for its reporting on Hurricane Katrina.
In 2012, the paper reduced its publication days to three days a week and put focus on its NOLA.com site. In 2013, the paper resumed daily publishing, but only after The Advocate swooped in and began publishing the New Orleans addition that would prove to be fatal competition for the paper.
G/O Media: 25 jobs, April 30
Despite G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller claiming he didn't anticipate layoffs after he joined the new conglomerate (which comprises Gizmodo Media Group and The Onion), the company laid off 25 people, or 6% of its staff, in late April, Variety reported. The cuts included top editors and veteran reporters.
Spanfeller said that despite the cuts he planned to hire above the original headcount by the end of 2019. In May, there were only five postings on Gizmodo Media Group's job site.
Circa News: 16 jobs, March 26
Sinclair Broadcast Group's Circa News shuttered on March 26, 2019, with the company citing challenges facing small publishers.
"While we see new business opportunities with digital video and OTT, they do not require the daily publishing of a website," Sinclair told The Washington Post.
Sinclair told the publication that 16 employees would be laid off, and 22 would be integrated into Sinclair's news team.
Circa started as a news app in 2012 and was shut down in 2015 after failing to find a large user base. Sinclair bought and relaunched the property later that year.
Red Deer Advocate: 25 jobs, March 26
In late March, the CWA Canada media union announced that Alberta's local Red Deer Advocate, owned by Black Press Group, had laid off 26 staffers across the news and mail room.
Along with the cuts, Black Press announced it was shutting down the paper's weekly edition.
Digg: 2 jobs, March 26
Former tech legend turned new media company Digg.com laid off two editors in March, shrinking the number of employees to 10.
The staffers affected were the managing editor and the features editor, both of whom wrote and edited original content on the primarily aggregated site, indicating a refocusing on aggregation for the brand that in the last few years had branched out to publishing original writing and video.
The layoffs follow the sale of Digg in 2018 to ad-tech company BuySellAds, which cleaved off nearly half of the company.
In a statement to Business Insider, BuySellAds CEO said: "This does not mark the end of original content at Digg, nor does it hint at a major change in direction or strategy. We continue to believe in the publication just as much as the day we acquired it."
The Plain Dealer: 41 jobs, March 15
Cleveland's The Plain Dealer newspaper announced on March 15 that it would lay off 12 newsroom employees in addition to 29 previously announced layoffs scheduled for May. Editor George Rodrigue told union members by email that "since around 2001 newspaper advertising revenue has been plummeting."
The union has asked for the paper to wait until after an upcoming subscription drive to make the cuts and has vowed to fight them.
"This is a catastrophe for Cleveland and for local journalism," Guild unit chairman Ginger Christ said, according to Cleveland.com.
The 29 positions at stake are production jobs, which are being moved to a third-party factory that the paper is contracting. The additional 12 jobs are in the paper's news department.
First Look Media: 9 jobs, March 13
On March 13, First Look Media – the parent company of Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept and Laura Poitras' Field of Vision – laid off seven staff members and two contractors (4% of the group) across the company.
Three of those laid off were tasked with maintaining and securing the company's archive of materials leaked to Greenwald and Poitras by Edward Snowden. The Snowden archive was also shut down with the layoffs.
First Look Media CEO Michael Bloom told staffers that the company had decided to "focus on other editorial priorities" after mining the Snowden archive for five years, the Daily Beast reported.
Bloom continued: "It is our hope that Glenn and Laura are able to find a new partner – such as an academic institution or research facility – that will continue to report on and publish the documents in the archive consistent with the public interest."
New York Media: 32 jobs, March 11
New York Media, the family-held owner of New York Magazine, Vulture, and other properties, laid off 32 employees on March 11 as part of a restructuring. The cuts affected 16 full-time employees and 16 freelance or part-time workers, according to a statement from the company.
"The departments most especially affected include audience development/circulation, copy, fact, production, and video," the company said.
In November, the company announced that all its online content would go behind a paywall, which it said was part of the reason for the cuts.
"In some cases, the changes we are making reflect a need for new focus as we build out our digital subscription business; in others, they reflect an overdue integration of print and digital staff," read the statement.
Last year the company said it was considering a sale; this year its staff formed a union.
Metro: 3 jobs, March 7
On March 7, Philadelphia's Inquirer reported that three staffers in Philadelphia had been laid off from the free tabloid Metro, which also publishes in New York City and Boston, where there were also layoffs.
The team was told the news over the phone from a new executive team in New York, and were shell-shocked, according to The Inquirer. The paper is said to be refocusing on building readership among train and bus riders in the city.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 23 jobs, March 4
Fourteen people took voluntary buyouts at the legendary St. Louis Dispatch in March, following the paper's announcement in January that it would offer 15 buyouts and downsize offices.
In February, nine design, copy, and layout employees were laid off when the paper decided to outsource the work.
The Dispatch laid off five people in 2018 and had another round in 2015.
Canadian Living, Style at Home, Elle Canada: 28 staffers, February 19
On February 19, Canadian Living, Style at Home, and Elle Canada magazines, owned by Groupe TVA, cut as many as 28 staffers.
According to an email from the company's VP of communications to J-Source, the company will move the headquarters of Canadian Living and Style at Home from Toronto to Montreal as part of the restructuring.
The company said: "In the context of the magazine industry undergoing numerous worldwide changes, TVA Publications had to reconfigure its internal structure. This decision will allow TVA Publications to continue to offer its readers and its advertisers high-quality brands that perform well in Canada."
Canadian Living and Style at Home were acquired in 2014 by Groupe TVA, which also owns Les Publications Transcontinental-Hearst Inc. – the owner of Elle Canada and Elle Quebec, according to J-Source.
Machinima: 81 jobs, February 1
Machinima, what used to be one of the largest video producers online, announced that it was closing in statements to news outlets February 1.
"Machinima has ceased its remaining operations, which includes layoffs," a spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter, announcing that 81 jobs had been cut.
The company, which made gaming content for YouTube, was bought by WarnerMedia and housed under Otter Media in 2016 but stopped publishing material in January.
Otter Media announced that it had cut 10% of staff in December.
Vice Media: 250 jobs, February 1
The Hollywood Reporter first reported layoffs at Vice Media. According to the report, the Brooklyn-based media company will cut about 250 jobs across the company, with the aim of trimming down and helping the organization become profitable.
"Having finalized the 2019 budget, our focus shifts to executing our goals and hitting our marks," CEO Nancy Dubuc wrote in an email to staff.
Vice Media will refocus around its TV production unit, its international news team, its digital properties, and its original TV content.
Staff members in the US who are unionized are set to receive payouts of their accumulated paid time off, 10 weeks of severance, and medical benefits.
The cuts were previewed in a Wall Street Journal report in November that said the company would cut staff in part because of audience attrition over the past three years.
The McClatchy Co.: 450 jobs, February 1
On February 1, The McClatchy Co., which owns properties such as the Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star, emailed staffers to announce that 450 employees would be offered voluntary buyouts as part of a "functional realignment," essentially signaling that the jobs have been marked out of the budget.
The news was first reported by the Miami New Times. It followed McClatchy's failed attempt to buy Tribune Publishing in 2018.
Verizon (Yahoo, AOL, HuffPost): 800 jobs, January 23
In late January it was reported that Verizon would cut 7% of its staff at its media companies (an estimated 800 people), which include Yahoo, AOL, and The Huffington Post.
"These were difficult decisions, and we will ensure that our colleagues are treated with respect and fairness, and given the support they need," Guru Gowrappan, CEO of Verizon Media, said in a memo to staff.
It's estimated that 20 employees were laid off at HuffPost last Thursday, including opinion writers, political reporters, and others. Nearly 100 corporate Verizon employees were reportedly laid off in San Francisco.
The layoffs are in addition to the 10,400 employees that Verizon is looking to shed by the middle of 2019 as part of a buyout program announced in December.
Gannett: 400 jobs, January 23
Newspaper giant Gannett reportedly laid off journalists across the US the same day that Verizon's layoffs were reported, following a round of voluntary buyouts.
Gannett has been quiet about the layoffs, but Poynter reported on cuts that affected editors and senior journalists at local papers owned by Gannett in regions across the US. The New York Post reports that cuts affected as many as 400 people. In total, Gannett owns over 100 news entities.
The layoffs came after Alden Global Capital made a $1.3 billion hostile takeover bid to take control of the company, which it says it's reviewing.
BuzzFeed: 200 people, January 23
BuzzFeed announced last Wednesday it would lay off about 220 employees, slashing jobs in its news, LGBTQ, international, and other divisions.
The layoffs ruffled feathers among media watchers when employees working outside of California were not offered payouts for their accrued paid time off, a decision that was eventually reversed after BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti met with staff council and was called out on the publisher's own streaming show, AM2DM.
Laid-off BuzzFeed employees also received a notable amount of harassment from trolls online, NBC News reported.
In a memo published by Digiday on Tuesday, Peretti said the company would refocus its efforts on BuzzFeed Originals (home to quizzes and viral videos), commerce content, branded content, and branded production and publishing.
In 2018, BuzzFeed laid off its in-house podcasting team and restructured its advertising group.
Condé Nast: 10 jobs, January 10
Job cuts hit Condé Nast in January, quietly eliminating several positions across its properties.
Slate reported that on January 10, the day Condé Nast's Wired magazine moved onto a new floor of One World Trade Center, five employees were let go. In November, Wired cut five staffers devoted to its Snapchat channel.
WWD reported cuts also hit editors at Glamour and junior staff at GQ magazine.
In 2018, multiple executives left the company ahead of an unspecified number of layoffs on its digital side.
The Dallas Morning News: 43 jobs, January 7
The Dallas Morning News eliminated 43 jobs, according to the Columbia Journalism Review, half of them in the newsroom, on January 7. The cuts affected journalists who covered immigration, transportation, the environment, and the courts.
In a letter, publisher Grant Moise said the cuts would reduce costs and begin a refocusing of the paper. Moise said the editorial and opinion section would be merged, and arts coverage would be reduced.
For context, it's estimated that 5,000 journalism jobs disappeared between 2014 and 2017.
The cuts represent a seismic shift in the media landscape. According to the Pew Research Center, a total of 5,000 media jobs left the market between 2014 and 2017, including growth in the digital sector.
Also, Bloomberg of 1 July 2019 reported:-
business
Journalism Job Cuts Haven't Been This Bad Since the Recession
Reporters become bartenders and baristas while looking for work
By Gerry Smith
1 July 2019, 17:00 GMT+8
The news business is on pace for its worst job losses in a decade as about 3,000 people have been laid off or been offered buyouts in the first five months of this year.
The cuts have been widespread. Newspapers owned by Gannett and McClatchy, digital media companies like BuzzFeed and Vice Media, and the cable news channel CNN have all shed employees.
The level of attrition is the highest since 2009, when the industry saw 7,914 job cuts in the first five months of that year in the wake of the financial crisis, according to data compiled by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an outplacement and executive coaching firm.
The firm's tally is based on news reports of buyouts and layoffs, and includes downsizing at printing operations and advertising and tech executives at Verizon Media Group, home of HuffPost and Yahoo, which announced in January that it was laying off about 800 employees.
About 88,000 people worked in U.S. newsrooms in 2017, according to Pew Research Center.
With the U.S. unemployment rate the lowest since 1969, the journalism job market is one of the rare weak spots, said Andrew Challenger, the firm's vice president.
"In most industries, employers can't find enough people to fill the jobs they have open," he said. "In news, it has been the opposite story. And it seems to have been accelerating."
The cuts have created a competitive job market where the number of out-of-work journalists often exceeds the number of openings. When Bklyner, a local news site in Brooklyn, said in May it was looking for a new political reporter, 16 journalists emailed their resumes within a few hours, said Liena Zagare, Bklyner's editor and publisher. Many had prior work experience at national media outlets such as CNN, Reuters and New York Magazine.
"I was looking at my inbox like, 'Oh my goodness,'" Zagare said in an interview. "It was beyond what I've seen before — the kind of people looking to work for us and the speed that their applications were coming in. To me, it was incredibly depressing. It says something about this industry that we can't employ these people."
Bad News
U.S. newsroom jobs dropped 23% between 2008 and 2017
There are a few reasons for the job losses. Local newspapers have seen much of their advertising revenue vanish as readers move online. They've also struggled to attract many digital subscribers after past rounds of layoffs and buyouts eroded their quality. Digital media startups, funded by venture capitalists seeking growth, aggressively hired journalists then scaled back to focus on profitability. Almost everyone is struggling to compete with Facebook and Google, which accounted for three-fourths of U.S. online ads sales last year.
The job instability in online media is one reason for the wave of unionizing across the landscape. At Vox Media, home of websites like the Verge and Eater, a new union contract ensures that employees get a minimum of 11 weeks of severance pay if they get laid off.
In January, John Stanton, a former Washington bureau chief for BuzzFeed News, was one of about 250 people cut from the company. In June, he helped start a nonprofit called the Save Journalism Project, which calls attention to how tech giants like Facebook and Google are threatening newsrooms by dominating the online advertising market.
So far, the group has published op-eds in newspapers, launched an advertising campaign and flown a plane over a Google conference with a banner that read "#savelocalnews."
"We're trying to get our colleagues to speak up," Stanton said. "We need to protect ourselves or we're not going to have jobs."
Many BuzzFeed journalists who were laid off in January are still looking for full-time work, he said. Several are freelancing, in some cases writing 1,000-word articles that pay about $400 and take a week to complete. "The pay freelancers get is completely inadequate," Stanton said.
While tech giants are often blamed for the news industry's financial troubles, they have also become a destination for journalists who want to leave the field. Amazon is hiring editors to cover local crime news for a division of its security-focused doorbell, Ring. Facebook, Apple, Snapchat and Google have all hired journalists in recent years to work on their media-related initiatives.
The journalism job hunt can be particularly challenging between the coasts. Last year, Emma Roller, 30, took a buyout after working as a politics writer for the website Splinter, which was part of Univision's Gizmodo Media Group. She got married and moved from Washington to Chicago to be closer to family. But as she looked for a new job, she found many positions required that she live in New York, Washington or Los Angeles.
"All of media has become concentrated in three cities," said Roller, who now works part-time at an elementary school and as a barista at a coffee shop while freelancing. "I chose to move away from where journalism jobs are. But at the same time it's a structural problem."
"No one becomes a journalist to get rich."
Journalism schools say enrollment is up, despite the dark headlines about the industry, and they are adjusting their curriculum to prepare students for in-demand jobs. The University of Maryland expects 44 graduate journalism students this fall, up from 32 last year. The school has started requiring students take more audio reporting classes because "this generation seems to love podcasts," said Lucy Dalglish, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
Some news outlets are growing. The Los Angeles Times has added about 100 employees to its editorial staff since billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the newspaper last June. The Washington Post announced recently it is adding 10 people to its investigative team.
But for some journalists, even winning national awards is not enough to help make ends meet. More than two years ago, Chris Outcalt took a chance on a job at a startup that wanted to launch a technology news website. But the team was laid off before it got off the ground. So Outcalt began freelancing.
In June, Outcalt won a Livingston Award, a prestigious prize given to journalists under the age of 35. Yet he's still searching for a full-time job. In the meantime, he's started working part-time as a bartender at a craft brewery in Denver to help pay the bills.
"I'm often thinking about whether I'll be able to hang on until I find something a little more stable — something, say, that provides health insurance," Outcalt said. "Certainly no one becomes a journalist to get rich. But I also can't imagine there are that many people who would want to enter a challenging profession that also requires you to tend bar two nights a week."
So there you go folks.
Would you want to become a journalist or would you want your children to become journalists, when either you or they could be retrenched mid-career with a car loan and house loan to pay off and children to support ???
How would you fancy riding a motorcycle taxi with GoJek or driving a taxi with Grab for a living ???
Some say that the media is going through a phase of Creative Destruction and that as opportunities disappear in older forms of media, new opportunities are emerging in newer and more sophisticated forms of media but are there enough of these new opportunities to absorb all those displaced by the decline of older forms of media ???
I'll leave you to think about that.
Yours truly
IT.Scheiss
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