The coronavirus pandemic helped decimate already declining U.S. media jobs in digital, print, and broadcast newsrooms, according to new data.
According to the figures provided by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. and posted by Axios, 16,000 newsroom jobs were lost in 2020 — higher than the last peak in 2008, when 15,000 newsroom jobs disappeared.
The data showed 14,000 “other media jobs” were lost this year as well, a category that includes jobs in television/film/streaming production, advertising, and book publishing. Those categories got whacked in 2008 as well, shedding nearly 15,000 jobs.
The bleeding has been relentless over the past 12 years, decreasing but never stopping from 2010 to 2015, the data showed.
Axios noted that widespread layoffs and structuring during the pandemic have been particulary brutal.
Poynter.org has kept a running list of pandemic-related layoffs, furloughs, and closures that have rocked journalism.
And a Pew Research Center report last month on the financial state of the news media in the second quarter of 2020 found ad revenue at six newspaper chains — which accounted for more than 300 newspapers — fell 42% compared compared with the second quarter of 2019.
“By contrast, total ad revenue across the three major cable news networks was steady overall, but there were sharp differences between the networks: While ad revenue for MSNBC and CNN declined by double digits, Fox News Channel’s revenue rose by 41%,” the study found.
At five local TV news companies, with more than 600 individual stations, revenue was also down, but retransmission fees covered the losses, the study found.
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