The Media Industry: Where It's Been & Where It's Going
The newspaper industry has been undergoing an evolution, and the economic challenges that the industry faces have been well-documented over time. Employment in newsrooms has declined by 45% since 2004. BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, and Gannett all let go a percentage of their workforce in late January 2019. Vice Media announced that they are cutting 10% of their workforce on February 1st, and more companies are expected to follow suit. Gannett owns USA Today, among other circulations, and many local newspapers. The local newspapers in particular have been slammed over the past several years, and the most recent round of layoffs were just another slap in the face.
The disruptive nature of the Internet and the changing demographics of a subscriber base are some of the variables that the industry has dealt with, but there are also underlying revenue deficiencies within the newspaper system. The advent of big tech and the power of Facebook and Google has put pressure on publishers. Despite Google and Facebook's $300 million pledge to support journalism, that pressure doesn't look like it's going away any time soon.
Read it in Print: The Golden Age of Newspapers
Newspapers were booming during the early half of the 20th century. People would get two newspapers everyday, one with the morning news, and one with the evening news. The subscriber base began to flatline in the early 70s, but a true contraction in growth didn't show up until the 1990s, where it has steeply declined since then.
Source: Journalism.org
The newspaper companies were thriving during the 1990's, despite the contraction in the number of subscribers. Gannett (GCI) and Knight Ridder, the industry leaders, were trading with 20 - 30% profit margins, which by comparison to other
