The ailing US news industry is bracing for more turmoil, with the COVID-19 pandemic expected to deliver an economic shock to the sector — just when people need credible information the most.
The impact is expected to be especially difficult for the country’s newspaper sector, which has endured a decade where 2,000 publications have disappeared and newsroom jobs have fallen by half.
News organizations are expected to take a hit from drops in advertising in an economic downturn, and could see declines in subscription revenue as readers pare expenses.
Conferences and events that some organizations have used to supplement their incomes are also likely to disappear as long as the health emergency persists.
“If you’re ad-supported and now heading into a period of short-term economic contraction, that’s very bad for your business,” said Gabriel Kahn, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California who follows industry economic trends. “For smaller local players that’s a direct hit they can’t easily recover from.”
The free Seattle weekly The Stranger last week warned of an impending crisis and asked readers for donations, saying that “90 percent of our revenue — advertising, ticketing fees and our own events — is directly tied to people getting together in groups. The coronavirus situation has virtually eliminated this income all at once.”
At the same time, the epidemic offers “an opportunity to turn the tide of the past few years” and rebuild trust with readers, University of Oregon journalism professor Damian Radcliffe said.
“At a time of a national and international public health crisis, communities need reliable, informed journalism more than ever,” he said.
Radcliffe said several news organizations have dropped online paywalls as an effort to show “journalism as an act of public good.”
Kahn agreed that for many newsrooms, “this is the moment they can develop a connection with their audience and establish their value.”
Joseph Lichterman, head of editorial and digital strategy at Lenfest Institute, which owns the Philadelphia Inquirer, said that news organizations would face huge challenges in covering the crisis as well as an opportunity.
“People tend to trust local media more than national media, so you want to have strong local news organizations,” he said.
However, he added that news organizations are being pressed to expand coverage as the health crisis worsens, creating additional problems.
“They have to deal with the logistics of keeping the business afloat and making sure their staff is safe,” he said.
Some research has pointed to the importance of local media in dealing with an epidemic, among other public interest matters.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS