The terrible, awful, no good, very bad newspaper industry -- in charts!
Paper bad. TV good. Platforms dominant.
That's the overarching message of the Pew Research Center's "State of the News Media" report issued on Wednesday. The annual study takes a close look at the U.S. news industry.
It's a particularly big bummer this year if you like newspapers. To give you an idea of how bad it is, here's the report's opening line: "Eight years after the GreatRecession sent the U.S.newspaper industry into a tailspin, the pressures facingAmerica’s newsrooms have intensified to nothing less than a reorganization of the industry itself, one that impacts the experiences of even those news consumers unaware of the tectonic shifts taking place."
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In 2015, average weekday newspaper circulation fell 7%, the worst decline since 2010. Ad revenue among publicly traded companies dropped 8% -- and that even takes into account digital sales.
Props to Pew for the handy visuals:
Consumers are reading news on mobile phones more than ever, which would be great if news outlets made much money from the Internet. Digital ad spending continues to increase, but Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter are taking the bulk of the money coming online.
"It has been evident for several years that the financial realities of the web are not friendly to news entities, whether legacy or digital only," the report said.
On the upside, television news remains reasonably healthy. Pew found that network, cable and local TV ad revenue has increased, although local viewership is in decline.
And now, for some depressing charts.
First, newspaper circulation declines.
Second, newspaper ad revenue declines.
Newsroom headcount declines.
"Major staff cuts occurred between April of 2015 and spring 2016 at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Tribune Publishing (including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune), the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Orange County Register, McClatchy’s foreign bureaus, the Seattle Times and Newsday, the Denver Post and the Boston Globe. (Globe editorial employees also spent one Sunday helping to deliver the paper.)" the report noted.
Plenty of newspapers have shuttered entirely.
Silver lining: Salaries are, mercifully, flat.
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Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
