The newspaper industry as we knew it is a thing of the past—and digital media is faring no better

 

Given hollywood’s insatiable appetite for
reboots, it’s surprising that we still haven’t seen
Four Funerals and a Merger, or indeed any cin-
ematic attempt to explore the dramatic poten-
tial posed by the ongoing decline of the news
business. It’s true that in the contemporary version of His Girl Friday, editor Cary Grant would have taken a buy-out or been put out to pasture well before crack reporter Rosalind Russell returned to the newsroom for one last scoop. (The hotshot reporter in a modern-day rendition of The Front Page—the 1931 version with two male leads—might well have followed through on his plan to give up journalism for the joys of married life and a career in advertising.) Even Marty Baron—the hero editor of Spotlight—ended his career as a bad-tempered apologist for Jeff Bezos.

Because whatever its other rewards, journalism no longer offers anything like job security.

With an average of 2.5 newspapers closing
every week in 2023—up from two a week the
previous year—the United States has lost one-
third of its newspapers, and two-thirds of its
newspaper journalists, since 2005. The result, according to North-
western Medill’s “State of Local News 2023” report, is that more
than 200 counties in the country are “news deserts,” places where
the workings of local government, the excesses of local law enforcement, and the c onduct of local businesses and national corporations face no media scrutiny, and therefore little public accountability at all. As John Nichols recently noted, some of these deserts have swallowed up major cities.

And in the current winner-take-all news economy, The New
York Times gets to enjoy the dominance that comes with 10 million
digital subscribers while its former competitors are left to fight over
scraps. This has led to mass layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, buyouts at The Washington Post, and the continuing collapse of major local papers from Tampa to Tucson. Those papers that have managed to survive have significantly cut back on their coverage of national politics.

Nor has digital media provided anything like an adequate

replacement. With Vice and BuzzFeed—both once
touted as the future of journalism—now consigned
to the dustbin of history, X/Twitter a lingering
blight on public discourse, The Messenger newly
dispatched, and The Intercept, Time, and Business
Insider all reeling from layoffs, a forecast of doom
followed by gloom seems unavoidable.

NATION