NOVEMBER 8, 2019 SOME GOOD NEWS, for a change, about climate change: When hundreds of newsrooms focus their attention on the climate crisis, all at the same time, the public conversation about the problem gets better: more prominent, more informative, more urgent.
In September, 323 news outlets from across the United States and around the world collaborated to provide a week of high-profile coverage of the climate story, in the most extensive such project on record.
The collaboration was organized by Covering Climate Now, a project co-founded by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation. Participants included The Guardian, the project’s lead media partner, and some of the biggest newspapers, television and radio stations, and online news sites in the world... these 323 outlets reached a combined audience of well over 1 billion people... to make the climate story a routine part of daily news coverage...
Six Months Later, in The Guardian
US newspapers face 'extinction-level' crisis as Covid-19 hits hard
As journalists across the US scramble to cover the impact of the coronavirus, they are grappling with a bitter irony: as demand for their stories soars, the decline of the business model that funds them is speeding up catastrophically... the virus, industry experts warn, will spell the end for “hundreds” of those organizations , laying off journalists and closing titles.
Media outlets across the US have already responded to a huge drop in advertising... by sacking scores of employees. Some newspapers, just as demand is at its highest, have stopped printing -...Penny Abernathy, the Knight chair in journalism and digital media economics at the University of North Carolina, predicts “An extinction-level event will probably hit the smaller ones really hard, as well as the ones that are part of the huge chains.”
Expert
As journalists across the US scramble to cover the impact of the coronavirus, they are grappling with a bitter irony: as demand for their stories soars, the decline of the business model that funds them is speeding up catastrophically.
The devastating sweep of Covid-19 is the biggest story in a generation, and for most newspapers and news sites it has triggered record numbers of readers. Yet the virus, industry experts warn, will spell the end for “hundreds” of those organizations, laying off journalists and closing titles.
Media outlets across the US have already responded to a huge drop in advertising triggered by the economic shutdown by sacking scores of employees. Some newspapers, just as demand is at its highest, have stopped printing – reverting to a digital-only operation that is just as vulnerable to the whims of advertisers.
The decrease in advertising was swift, as businesses tightened spending due to the economic impact of Covid-19. For a journalism industry already barely scraping by, the impact was almost immediate.
In Louisiana, one of the states suffering the most from the coronavirus, the Times-Picayune and the Advocatefurloughed 10% of its 400 staff, and switched the rest to four-day work weeks. The Plain Dealer, a daily newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, laid off 22 newsroom staff – including its health reporter.
Lester Black, 30, of Seattle, said he was laid off by the Stranger on 13 March. Photograph: Jason Redmond/Reuters
In Seattle, the weekly Stranger magazine said it was suspending publication, and temporarily laid off 18 employees. The Tampa Bay Times, Florida’s largest newspaper, has switched to a twice-weekly print edition after it lost $1m in advertising due to coronavirus. Paul Tash, the Times’ chairman and CEO, said he hoped to restore normal operations in the future, a message many news outlets have echoed.
However, some experts aren’t sure that many places will ever return to normal.
‘I think there’ll be hundreds, not dozens, of closures’
Penny Abernathy, the Knight chair in journalism and digital media economics at the University of North Carolina, predicts a swath of newspapers and websites will close.
“I think there’ll be hundreds, not dozens,” Abernathy said.
“An extinction-level event will probably hit the smaller ones really hard, as well as the ones that are part of the huge chains.”
