It’s behind a paywall BUT a recent article in the Washington Post reports that a study showed that only 16% of teens read a book, magazine or newspaper everyday. Back in the 1970’s that number was 60%. A huge falloff due to social media.
THIS is extremely scary. Although, back in the '70s the magazine could have been Tiger Beat.
The Village Voice, the first alternative weekly in the U.S. and founded in 1955, ceased publication entirely on Friday, Aug. 31. Eight of the Voice’s remaining 18 staffers were were laid off also on Friday. The newspaper was home to some of the best investigative reporting, winning Pulitzers.
Yup. End of an era. Read the history here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/media/the-village-voice-closes.html
There’s a good article in the Washington Post today about the rise in journalism majors in response to Trump’s denigration of the media.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/a-trump-effect-at-journalism-schools-colleges-see-a-surge-in-admissions/2018/09/16/18497156-b2b2-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html?utm_term=.ed902e41b1ce
Same thing happened after Watergate.
Great situation. More competition for fewer jobs.
Few traditional journalism jobs. There are many jobs in journalism. They’re just not the type you usually think of as journalism.
On the positive side, two items I saw in the Axios newsletter last week:
“Jeff Bezos, 54, owns The Washington Post, where today he’ll cut the ribbon on a newsroom expansion to accommodate 850 journalists and 350 engineers” (350 engineers!!)
And this:
The Trump boom is fueling both old and new media:
Not so long after old-school publications fretted about financial survival, digital subscriptions are booming at The New York Times ($99 million in the second quarter, a 20% jump from a year earlier), The Washington Post and The New Yorker — fueled by Trump fascination and extraordinary journalism for historic times.
Simon & Schuster says Bob Woodward’s “Fear” sold 750,000 all-format copies (including preorders) on Tuesday — the largest first-day sale for any title in company history. At the Barnes & Noble near Axios HQ, a table full of “Fear” was gone in a day.
That follows 2 million in global sales for Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury.”
The anonymous N.Y. Times op-ed, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” has drawn 14.5 million page views and sparked a week-long whodunit.
Jeff Bezos has done more for journalism than any other single person in my lifetime (and I do not work for WaPo). He showed WaPo how to be profitable in a digital environment. They hired 50 new reporters in advance of the new administration, then another 50 recently. The old competition between WaPo and NYT has been reignited. Print journalists, once anonymous except for their names in print, are now public figures, appearing on TV news shows to explain their reporting.