The relentless spread of news accelerated even before the coronavirus crippled local economies, and since then, the speed has accelerated further.
At the same time, the long-awaited virtual news cavalry coming to the rescue of network journalism has unexpectedly stopped.
These are the key findings of “News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive?,” a new report released Wednesday through Penelope Muse Abernathy and her program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. .
The 124-page report, the most comprehensive of the Abernathy team’s 4 since 2014, explores the news landscape from different angles. It is based on 15 years of accumulated knowledge that tracks newspapers, networks of virtual news sites and, new this year, 950 ethnic groups. media and 1,400 public broadcasters. Knowledge is interactive through the program’s website, which also delivers 350 interactive maps.
Since autumn 2018, the indicate:
(UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media)
The report not only measures supply against the past, but also looks to the future. He explores some hopeful odds: “I don’t like being Dr. Death,” Abernathy said in an interview, but he doesn’t shy away from the nasty ones.
“The coronavirus pandemic,” the report says, “has reminded us, once again, of the important importance of local news. . . However, right now, local media, big and small, for-profit and non-profit, face a serious economic risk to their existence.
Dozens of newspapers have closed, the report adds, and there is “a risk of dozens, if not many, more before the end of the year. “
The coronavirus cataclysm has shaken editors and observers in many ways.
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Columbia Journalism Review, at Columbia Journalism School, met “a moment of judgment” and announced the launch of the Journalism Crisis Project.
Harvard Business Review turned to global news to publish an essay titled The Failure of the Newspaper Market Is a Crisis for Democracy.
And among the pile of announcements of closures, mergers and clippings in the newspapers, this mind-boggling news:
A chain that published 14 weeklies in Chicago’s affluent suburbs, 22nd Century Media, threw in the towel. How rich? The median source of earnings for an American family is $63,179; the median in communities served through the chain is nearly double, and Winnetka’s, the highest, is $216,875. “Advertising and profit collection just stopped,” the network’s editor told the Chicago Tribune.
If it’s not imaginable to publish weekly newspapers in communities like this, where can it be?
Another position that doesn’t look good for editors, according to the report, is Maryland County, the 17th richest county out of 3144 in the U. S. A U. S. newspaper earners with an average household income of $99,763.
The demise of the 22nd century is noted in a single line among nearly two hundred entries in Poynter’s growing list that Kristen Hare has been compiling on Poynter’s online page since the pandemic ended: newspapers that closed or merged, downsized the newsroom and/or executives. compensation, reduction of working hours, reduction of days of printed publication, total closure of printing to full digital, other people on leave or cuts of tasks, pause or closure of buildings or newsrooms.
Between 2004 and 2018, Abernathy said of the information his team collected and analyzed, the death rate varied from year to year but averaged 10 per month, with a specific peak after the Great Recession of 2008. Then, in 2019, the rate above 20 in line with the month. And since the pandemic hit, the rate has climbed again, to 30 in a month, said Abernathy, UNC’s Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics.
“Industry analysts,” concludes the report’s segment on newspaper chain ownership, “predict that a prolonged and deep recession as a result of the coronavirus could lead to the closure of many newspapers and potentially the bankruptcy of chains that are heavily in debt. . “
(UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media)
As of fall 2018, UNC researchers had 525 network-level virtual news sites, adding some for-profit and some nonprofit. The news is that more than 80 new networking sites have been introduced since then, according to the report, and the bad news is that the same number have died out during the same period. Count of the day: 525, a net gain of zero.
“Many of the first local news sites created between 2008 and 2012 imagined a commercial style that relied primarily on the virtual profits of local businesses,” the report said. , many websites, even for-profit ones, turn to global nonprofits for those funds. “
And, according to the report, “there is a critical need for more investments that would inspire the expansion of those businesses into spaces that lack a local media outlet. “
One of the glimmers of hope in the 2020 news landscape is that NINT, the nonprofit news institute, has been receiving new requests for new sites since the pandemic hit.
Sue Cross, executive director of INN, said in an interview that the same thing happened after the Great Recession of 2008: journalists who had lost their jobs were beginning to explore new possibilities, leading to a wave of startups. Now, many bloodhounds are wasting their jobs, and many are back asking what it would take to start a nonprofit site.
In addition, Cross said, INN began receiving questions about how nonprofit sites work from networking foundations and civic leaders alarmed by how their cities’ legacy newspapers have gone under.
That said, it added that 60 percent of its members believe the pandemic probably won’t interfere with their funding, but the remaining 40 percent is positive.
Chris Krewson, executive director of an advertising organization targeting for-profit news sites called LION, or Local Independent Online News Publishers, said only one of LION’s members has closed since the pandemic hit. Paint an optimistic picture. Those with business models that rely too heavily on retail advertising are struggling. Many more publishers are experimenting with reader revenue. “
(UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media)
According to the report, this is a pivotal year and we are now creating potential options that will shape the local news landscape in the long term.
The report includes 35 pages exploring conceivable paths to a strong long-term for local news, including:
The coronavirus crisis has for the first time prompted Congress to explore tactics for local journalism, as well as other local business bureaucracy.
Some journalism thinkers have been advocating for government for years with little response. Today, five expenditures that address this factor are receiving congressional attention, and issues being explored include small business management loans, getting more government utility announcements at local sites, pension debt relief, and tax credits for newsroom positions.
As our fragility advances in these fragile times, the report calls for:
“Will our movements, or immobilizations, lead to an ‘extinction point’ of suffering of local newspapers and other media, as some in the race have predicted?Or will they lead to a reset: a popularity of what’s at stake if we lose local news, as well as a commitment to the civic project of journalism and a bid for its renewal?
Tom Stites is a consulting editor for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and founder and president of the Banyan Project, which pioneered a cooperative style of network journalism.