Today’s news that #Tronc cut #NYDailyNews staff by half hits home. It’s been 2-and-a-half years since my @PhillyDailyNews layoff, and it still stings. (thread)
Anytime a publishing company axes its staff so severely, people speculate why. They blame everything from
declining advertising sales and the explosion of digital news sources … vox.com/new-money/2016…
declining advertising sales and the explosion of digital news sources … vox.com/new-money/2016…
… to newsprint tariffs … marketwatch.com/story/trump-er…
… to millennials who have dumped traditional news sources like newspapers and radio for web and social media … businessinsider.com/how-millennial…
Often missing from the blame game is corporate greed. politico.com/magazine/story…
Often, publishers push veteran journalists, with their higher paychecks, out the door first. With them goes their institutional knowledge, historical perspective, and expertise earned over time. thenation.com/article/these-…
The younger journalists taking their place tend to have more multimedia skills - but can lack foundational writing and reporting skills and prioritize retweets and how viral a story gets over its impact on others, according to one recent study. colorado.edu/today/2018/01/…
Regardless of age or performance, journalists who somehow manage to dodge layoff get poverty pay for their loyalty: huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/rep…
Despite working ridiculous hours. poynter.org/news/i-almost-…
At the same time, they live with unending stress over job loss, which seems an inevitable eventuality. A recent study found that more than a third of the U.S.’s biggest newspapers and a quarter of news outlets laid off staff in the past year. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018…
A study in Australia found that most laid-off journalists don’t find another journalism job and leave the industry altogether. (I’ve been gone from daily journalism for three months, and my heart still bleeds.) tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
And talk about #fakenews: As journalism has shrunk, public relations has grown.
washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…
washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…
AND YET, journalism is the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve talked to everyone from politicians to prisoners, Hollywood celebrities to homeless moms. My stories have changed policy, exposed secrets,helped vulnerable people+more. Journalism is my dearest love.(No offense to my family) 
The upshot of this steady drain-swirling of newspapers is: 1) less investigative journalism, which allows corruption to fester and the public to keep its head comfortably, dangerously in the sand ... reason.com/archives/2017/…
And 2) Fewer stories and less information about what’s happening in local communities. (This study, based on New Jersey’s journalism scene, has lots of great info on the various impacts of journalism cuts in NJ.) centerforcooperativemedia.org/wp-content/upl…
So please BUY A NEWSPAPER. SUBSCRIBE TO A NEWS WEBSITE. SUPPORT JOURNALISM. Democracy depends on it. Also: HIRE AN OUT-OF-WORK JOURNALIST! Today, you have dozens of freshly fired journalists you could hire, and journalists are smart, passionate, talented go-getters. -30-
MUST ADD 2 things: Photographers among the hardest hit in this era when everyone thinks all you need to take a good picture is an iPhone and a photo-filtering app. (So wrong-headed. Professional photogs can't be beat.) pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013…
And those spelling and grammar errors you see nowadays? Gutted copy desks. Sometimes all it takes to turn off a reader forever is a misspelled headline. theoutline.com/post/2780/new-…
