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Layoffs at Gannett, Verizon/Oath/HuffPo, Buzzfeed. Another bad bad day for journalism. Support the news organizations you value.
If you're not spending as much on supporting news/journalism as you do on cable/streaming entertainment, consider a priority shift.
A big reason that so many news orgs are hurting is the deceptive bait-and-switch policies Facebook thrust upon them: motherjones.com/media/2018/12/…
Working on a tighter variant of this piece right now for the print mag and I'm going to have to update it with these new rounds of layoffs 😥😥
It's nice that some billionaires have saved two of America's great dailies and souped up the Atlantic. But almost every other news org is hurting, be it local newspapers or Condé Nast or Gannett. If you think the world is a dumpster fire now, imagine with a lot less watchdogs.
Billionaires are fickle. Foundations are fickle. VCs are verrrrry fickle. Just as with politics we need to distribute the donor base of journalism. So that it's more representative. So that it lasts the whims and self-interest of the wealthy.
Corporate mismanagement has accelerated the decline of media companies, in some cases. But the biggest issue is vanishing ad revenue—in print and digital. To survive, news orgs need to diversify revenue streams and get more subscriptions and/or donations.
VC-fueled startups bet on scale to get around the fundamentals of declining per-ad-unit rates. Didn't work. we called it two years ago: motherjones.com/media/2016/04/…
Unions can help extend severance pay, and they can sometimes keep some dumb corporate moves at bay. But they can't change the fundamentals of revenue and costs in a declining ad market. That needs another kind of collective commitment, that of reader support.
Here is an excellent thread that gives you the basics on the ad implosion.
And I don't want to scare people, but I'd bank on a major "correction" coming to the podcast market too. Ever notice how all the advertisers on them are a handful of VC-fueled startups themselves? Yeah...
Revenue diversification is key. And for @motherjones, a non-profit, reader support is our mainstay, as we lay out in this piece: motherjones.com/media/2018/12/… 
@MotherJones So while there've been a lot of people parking on this thread who decidedly don't like (or follow, hmmmmm) MoJo or me, if you want to support us, go here: secure.motherjones.com/fnx/?action=SU…
Thanks @jaykaydee, but I think what people maybe miss is that it’s not just MoJo or @ProPublica that are turning to reader support. Everything from NYT to Buzzfeed to DailyBeast—all for-profits—are asking readers to donate or take out extra subs.
And let me be crystal clear: if you are working at a digital media shop whose vast majority of revenue is coming from ads, either you need to make a change or your company does. This trend is not going to turn around.
Even though it can be a grind, one of the best things we at MoJo do is have a ~monthly all-staff where we run thru economic projections and what we're doing in response to them. I'm amazed how many journalists out there don't get the fundamentals of this industry/their company.
We currently have four open newsroom jobs @motherjones. Hoping to accelerate and add more. motherjones.com/jobs/
