I’ve been employed as a full-time journalist on and off for 6-7 years. At the start of that time period, the job landscape felt bleak; there was a drought, but still, there are always plants that have evolved to withstand drought. Journalism and digital media jobs were hard to come by, but it didn’t quite feel like an outrageous career path yet. But now the drought’s gone on so long that even those plants built for it are dying.
The entire time I’ve worked in the industry, there have been mass layoffs at major outlets and news corporations every few months. There are hundreds of outlets that no longer exist. There are swaths of journalists I used to read but have lost track of because where would I read them? They probably had to pivot to copywriting for a probiotic soda brand.
I still have a job in the industry, technically, but barely hanging on. I won’t get into the details while I still work there, but I will just say that I can’t stop threatening to fight William Randolph’s Hearst’s ghost. But really, I want fight with the ghost or living body of any wealthy magnate who has had a hand in destroying the industry, whether it’s the guy who ruined G/O Media, or the guy who bought Napoleon’s hat or the freaky Block man.
It’s not just that I’m worried about my own job or career or whatever, though I am, obviously. It’s about the bigger picture, man. There used to be a bunch of places you could read film reviews — I used to write film reviews! Just yesterday, I saw an ad for Mr. Beast’s channel on the Roku app and I thought, damn, there was a time when there would be blogs about Mr. Beast’s channel on the Roku app. And then there’s just the massive void where local news used to be.
Pittsburgh, for example, still has an alt-weekly, the Pittsburgh City Paper, where I used to work, though it’s now owned by the Block family, who owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where the entire staff is technically made up of scabs because the original employees have been on strike for well over a year, so long that many of them have left for other opportunities or taken jobs on the side. When the Post-Gazette cut down on its daily print editions in 2018, it made Pittsburgh the largest city in the U.S. without a daily print newspaper. In 2023, the U.S. lost print newspapers at a rate of 2.5 per week. You don’t realize until you work in local news just how important local news is to the community. And how little it is now valued by anyone other than those who make it.
There are other local outlets obviously, but most of them are a shell of what they once were. Every living journalist has either been laid off or knows someone who has. Every journalist knows someone who went into another field out of necessity, not desire. I know people who left their full-time journalism jobs for the service industry because the work was steadier and paid better. It’s a shitty feeling to acquire a set of skills and then feel them atrophy because there are no jobs left where they can be used.
I left my previous full-time journalism job for a classic, relatable reason: my editor/friend died by suicide while he was furloughed at the height of the pandemic and I was overwhelmed by the grief of being reminded of him every day at work. Happens to everyone! Also, I made $27,000 (a $2,000 raise from when I was hired).
I always thought I might transition into digital media at some point, but I now see that was always doomed. I’ve watched every outlet I ever enjoyed reading in high school, college, or beyond shut down one by one (Jezebel, Rookie, the Outline, Buzzfeed news, you know the ones.) I used to have a slew of tabs open on my computer of things I wanted to read throughout the day — interviews or blogs or a long feature it would take me days to get to — but now I can’t fill out that same number of tabs if I want to.
Earlier this week, the LA Times laid off 20% of its staff, 115 people. The Conde Nast union held a one-day strike this week because they have been told layoffs are coming. I can’t count on two hands how many outlets I used to read that no longer exist. Even the ones I never read, I’m sad to see go (RIP Sports Illustrated). There are outlets I’m surprised are still around, though I suspect they won’t be that much longer. There is no immunity in a drought this long.
There are a jillion reasons why things ended up this way, which include money and greed and the devaluation of labor and art. Distrust of media powered by politicians. Collapsed attention spans. Social media implosion. If there were more outlets still in existence, there would be more writing about it. Instead, there are just hundreds of Subsacks just like this one, trying to make lemonade with a bag of rotting clementines.
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