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AR 27:33 - The dangerous decline of newspapers
In this issue:
BIAS - Plummeting newspaper readership (and altered news-gathering habits) are "bound to deepen our country's ideological divide"
WOKENESS - As it spreads in the military, support and recruitment "will evaporate, and the consequences will be dire"
Apologia Report 27:33 (1,586)
September 27, 2022
BIAS
"What a wild ride!" -- Isn't that how most of us feel when we reflect on the change in news coverage over the last decade or two? In "The Decline and Fall of Newspapers" Charles Lipson (emeritus professor, Political Science, University of Chicago) reports that "the public's confidence in news from all sources" has tanked. "Only 16% of Americans say they have a 'great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in newspapers, only 11% in TV news. Those numbers keep sinking. ...
"One recent study shows that in our country of 332 million people, no newspaper has a print circulation of more than 1 million. Only nine have more than 100,000 subscribers. Among the 25 largest papers, only one showed an increase in circulation, and it serves a retirement community. It's shocking, really, that a paper with less than 50,000 subscribers is among the nation's largest.
"The decline is relentless. Print papers are losing one out of eight subscribers every year. Their daily circulation, over 63 million at its peak in the 1980s, is now about one-third that size. Over 25% of all American newspapers have died in the past 15 years. ...
"Papers that were once confined to local markets, like the New York Post, have developed a huge national reach, in part because they offer a rare alternative to left-wing papers like the New York Times and Washington Post. ...
"Still others, like Substack, host hundreds of serious columnists, including some, like Bari Weiss, who was driven out of the New York Times newsroom for [ideological] apostasy. John Kass, until recently the Chicago Tribune's most prominent columnist, left the paper for similar reasons and started his own website. Weiss and Kass are hardly alone." (See <www.bit.ly/3BF2lIC> for more.)
"[R]eaders in Tulsa or Tucson, who never had access to the Post or Times, can now read those national papers. That's good news for readers but bad news for local papers unless they can provide unique local content. That's what the best papers do. ...
"Some observers, especially conservative ones, have cast a skeptical eye on this contemporary media landscape and blamed the decline of print publications on 'woke' newsrooms. They are mistaking the cart for the horse. It's true that most newsrooms are woke, woke, woke. So are elite law firms, consulting firms, social media giants, entertainment companies, advertising firms, university faculty, and so on. Their employees, having completed their ideological training at places like Harvard, Brown, and Oberlin, tell us their pronouns in every email and wonder if Bernie Sanders might be too moderate. They dominate today's journalism, and their dominance is reflected in their papers' content. ...
"This technological shift actually encourages newsroom bias. Why? Because, as online sites proliferate, readers can easily gravitate to those that reflect their views. This self-selection reinforces the sites' incentives to tailor their content to keep those users and attract more like-minded ones. ...
"The problem for journalism is that this 'niche' logic has distorted general-interest papers, like the Los Angeles Times. It gives free rein to ideological bias among reporters and editors, muddling their editorial perspective with 'hard news' coverage. ...
"There are some exceptions, of course ... which aggregate and produces opinion pieces from left, right, and center and hires reporters to write the news of day straight. But this even-handedness is rare. Most outlets have slipped into comfortable ideological niches."
"This insularity is bound to deepen our country's ideological divide. That's very bad news indeed." <www.bit.ly/3BAHtSN>
We were glad to discover this piece. Follow the above link and you'll see that it comes from RealClearPolitics (Aug 4 '22). Note the ellipsis several lines above that link. Behind it, Lipson crows that RCP considers itself one of the few sources that "writes the news of day straight." We have no reason to challenge him on that. What encourages us here is that RCP is challenging the entire field of journalism. Bottom line, bias hurts everyone. More competition in raising journalism's level of integrity will, as with the election integrity movement, improve the breed by honoring the truth and not obfuscating the facts behind it.
POSTSCRIPT, Oct 27 '22: A verbatim addition
Top Newspaper Industry Trends (Editor’s Choice)
In 2020 alone, more than 300 US newspapers closed.
Print and digital ad revenues saw double-digit decreases in 2020.
20% of US news readers pay to access online editions of their favorite newspapers.
The Wall Street Journal had the highest circulation of all US papers in 2020.
Only 3% of US adults cite print newspapers as their primary information source.
The number of newspaper newsroom employees has dropped by 50% since 2008.
The Latest Newspaper Industry Trends
[... (see the end of this entry next)]
The number of daily print newspapers in America has fallen by almost 28%. A total of 488 dailies have disappeared in 50 years, from 1,748 in 1970 down to just 1,260 in 2020.
3. The US newspaper circulation numbers are at their lowest since 1940.
(Pew Research Center, PressGazette)
According to the latest available data, the combined daily print and digital circulation is estimated at 28.6 million, while Sunday press circulation is hovering over 30.8 million.
In the first three months of 2020, no major print newspaper has circulated more than a million copies daily — resulting in the industry’s least successful year since 1940.
4. Experts project newspaper market consumption volume will drop to 43.6 million copies by 2025.
(Grand View Research)
As online media consumption grows, print newspaper sales decline, resulting in a lesser market share and making the medium less appealing to advertisers. From 44.17 million copies in 2016, the volume is projected to drop to 43.6 million copies by 2025. This fall in market consumption volumes will inevitably have an impact on newspaper profits.
5. In 2020 alone, more than 300 US newspapers closed.
(The New York Times, Hussman School of Journalism and Media)
Across the US, newspapers have been closing and laying off staff.
The disappearance of many local daily papers is a major contributing factor to the newspaper industry’s decline. This phenomenon has left many journalists jobless and dozens of counties without a reliable source of information on local issues.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic also had a massive impact on US print media. More than 300 papers nationwide closed their doors due to the resulting financial crisis, and at least 6,000 US journalists have lost their jobs since the pandemic’s outbreak.
6. The US news media industry saw massive ad revenue declines in 2020.
(Pew Research Center)
Historically, advertising has been the single biggest source of revenue for papers. But due to the global pandemic, the median ad revenue of all publicly traded US news companies fell by a staggering 42% between the second quarter of 2019 and the same period in 2020.
With the decline of print advertising, many papers began relying on digital for their much-needed advertiser dollars. However, newspaper statistics show that digital ad revenue was down by 32% in 2020, leaving even the well-established papers strapped for cash.
7. 20% of US news readers paid to access online newspapers in 2020.
(Reuters Institute)
With newspaper revenue plummeting due to lack of advertising, papers are turning to online subscriptions and paid content to secure their financing.
According to a 2020 survey, 20% of US news readers paid to access online newspapers, most of them by subscribing to their favorite paper’s digital edition. This marked an increase of 4 percentage points from 2019, indicating that this model is slowly catching on in the US.
8. The New York Times is the most popular online newspaper, digital newspaper readership statistics show.
(Reuters Institute)
Of the people who subscribed to digital newspapers in 2020, 39% chose The New York Times. The Washington Post was second, with 31% of American news readers saying they had an online subscription to the paper. Interestingly, 30% subscribed to their local papers’ online editions, thus helping them overcome the pandemic-related financial struggles.
9. The Wall Street Journal had the highest print circulation of all US newspapers in 2020.
(PressGazette)
Newspaper sales statistics from the year’s first quarter show that The Wall Street Journal was by far the most popular with 994,600 copies distributed daily. All other papers were below the 500,000 mark — USA Today with 486,579 copies, The New York Times with 410,562, and The Washington Post with a daily circulation of 206,824 copies.
Newspaper Readership Trends in the US
10. Only 3% of US adults cite newspapers as their main news source.
(Pew Research Center)
Of all traditional media outlets, print has lost the most audience. In 2020, only 3% of American adults cited newspapers as their primary source of information. For comparison, 8% said they get their news from the radio, while 45% said they get it from television.
11. 16% of US adults got their information from newspapers in 2020.
(Reuters Institute)
Due to the COVID-19 lockdown and physical distribution problems, print newspaper readership saw a substantial decline in 2020. According to an April 2020 survey, just 16% of Americans said they got their news from physical newspapers, among other sources.
12. 25% of US senior citizens get their news in print.
(Pew Research Center)
A look at US newspaper demographics reveals that 25% of US adults aged 65 and over get their news from print publications. As for other age groups, only 11% of Americans aged 50–64, 4% in the 30–49 age group, and 3% in the 18–29 bracket said they often got their news from print in 2020.
13. 73% of American consumers have faith in their local newspaper.
(Poynter)
Despite the negative newspaper circulation trends in recent years, many Americans still have confidence in their local newspapers. Times may be challenging, but small dailies are seen as the most significant, trustworthy sources of information in their communities. These journals also provide more local reporting compared to TV, radio, and web-only outlets.
14. 54% of newspaper subscribers said they prefer print, and 28% said digital.
(American Press Institute)
Newspaper subscription numbers are still heavily leaning toward print. This is especially true for adults aged 65 and over who pay for the news they consume. About 72% of them are more likely to choose print than digital. Adults aged 18–34 like both formats equally: 42% say they’re likely to pay for print news, and about the same number would opt for digital.
15. 53% of print subscribers have had their subscription for five years or longer.
(American Press Institute)
The older adults who make up the majority of print subscribers have been paying for their local or national newspapers for several years. Most of them say they’d prefer to continue their print subscription, with 79% saying they’re unlikely to switch to digital and just 5% considering moving to digital.
16. 64% of print-oriented readers find physical newspapers easier to read.
(American Press Institute)
They also feel they can get more news in print. Their number one consideration is the quality of the news content and the publications’ coverage of topics and issues they care about. Print subscribers also believe newspapers help them stay informed and be better citizens.
17. 64% of digital subscribers say they chose it for accessibility.
(American Press Institute)
The decline of newspapers due to internet media consumption bodes well for the future of digital subscriptions. Digitally-oriented subscribers prefer this format because it gives them easy access to the news on the go. Other reasons for going this route include the lower price compared to print and more frequent updates of developing stories.
Jobs in the Newspaper Industry
18. Newsroom employment in the US dropped by 23% in 11 years.
(Pew Research Center)
Across the United States, newsroom employment has continuously slid, with job losses at newspapers leading the fall. In 2008, about 114,000 newsroom employees were working in five news industries. That number has collapsed to 88,000 — a total of 26,000 jobs lost.
It’s important to note that these newspaper employment decline statistics are from before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the industry. With thousands of journalists left jobless in 2020 alone, the updated numbers will likely be significantly lower.
19. The number of newsroom employees working in the newspaper sector fell by more than 50% since 2008.
(Pew Research Center)
The decline in newspapers’ circulations has inevitably led to the decimation of newspaper jobs. In 2008, more than 71,000 newsroom employees worked for newspapers, accounting for 62% of all employees across five news industries. However, recent newspaper statistics show their share in the newsroom has since dwindled to just 40% (34,950 employees).
20. Digital-native newsroom staff has ballooned by 116% since 2008.
(Pew Research Center)
The grass is greener where it’s pixels-only. From 7,400 to 16,000 in less than ten years, the staff count of digital newsrooms has more than doubled. However, this 8,600 rise is small potatoes next to the newspaper newsroom employment decline over the same period.
21. US newsroom employees have a median annual income of $48,050.
(Pew Research Center)
In this regard, newsroom employees are behind college-educated workers from other industries and occupations. Still, they fare better than the average worker in the country, whose median annual income is just over $39,000. Editors have a median wage of $49,000, while reporters earn a median annual wage of $35,000.
These newspaper facts are taken from a survey conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic. Many newsrooms have since cut their employees’ salaries to avoid firing the staff in the face of pandemic-related financial hardships. As such, when it becomes available, the 2020 financial info will likely show at least a small decrease in the median newsroom salary.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The future of print journalism in the US looks bleak. Newspaper readership has been steadily falling over the last few decades, and it shows no signs of stopping.
In 2020, the pandemic and lockdowns made the physical distribution of print publications more challenging than ever. It is thus no surprise that the newspaper circulation data shows such low figures. With the pandemic still limiting people’s access to newspapers and ad revenue steeply declining, publishers will have to find new revenue sources to survive.
Although many people — especially senior citizens — aren’t giving up on print anytime soon, the move to digital is the best step forward for the newspaper industry and publishers. In today’s technology-driven world, it will allow them to reach audiences of all ages, have a more significant public impact, and monetize their reporting via digital subscriptions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are newspaper sales declining?
Yes, the massive drop in circulation numbers and advertising means newspaper sales are suffering as well. Readers are less interested in print newspapers, which are typically more expensive than digital subscriptions. More and more people turn to digital instead, trading editorials for quicker reads, more timely news, and regular updates.
How much is the newspaper industry worth?
In 2020, the global industry generated $41.2 billion in advertising and another $52.2 billion in circulation revenue, for a total value of $93.4 billion. Of that sum, US-based papers were responsible for $23.25 billion — $13.07 billion from advertising and $10.18 billion from sales.
How many people still read newspapers?
According to a 2020 survey, 16% of US adults got their news from newspapers, among other sources. This translates to about 40.8 million Americans who read newspapers at least once during the year. Only 3% of Americans cited print newspapers as their primary source of information, meaning that close to 7.7 million US adults still regularly read newspapers.
How many newspapers are sold annually in the US?
Due to the complex circulation reporting process, it’s impossible to say precisely how many copies of print newspapers are sold each year. However, the most recent data shows that all US dailies circulate just under 28.6 million paid copies a day or about 10.4 billion a year.
The downward newspaper industry trend continued in 2020 when no newspaper managed to circulate more than 1 million copies a day, and only one crossed the 500,000 mark. With that in mind, the actual circulation numbers are likely considerably lower than this.
How many newspapers are printed daily?
Across the United States, there were 1,260 daily newspapers in 2020, a 1.5% decrease from 2018. Looking at historical data, 488 daily newspapers have disappeared over the last half-century. This marks a 28% drop in the total number of US dailies over 50 years.
What is the most widely read newspaper in the world?
According to the latest available data, Yomiuri Shimbun has the highest paid circulation in the world. One of Japan’s five national dailies, it sells more than 9 million copies a day. Interestingly, the newspaper is published twice a day and has several local editions.
[...]
https://letter.ly/newspaper-statistics/
---
WOKEISM
"The Rise of Wokeness in the Military" by Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation (Imprimis, 51:6-7, 2022) -- According to veteran soldiers, the largest threat by far to America's current military "is the weakening of its fabric by radical progressive (or 'woke') policies being imposed, not by a rising generation of slackers, but by the very leaders charged with ensuring their readiness.
"Wokeness in the military is being imposed by elected and appointed leaders in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon who have little understanding of the purpose, character, traditions, and requirements of the institution they are trying to change." Spoehr discusses the immediate and long-term impact potential.
Spoehr is fatalistic: "Wokeness in the military has become ingrained. And unless the policies that flow from it are illegal or directly jeopardize readiness, senior military leaders have little alternative but to comply." His two strongest arguments are that woke ideology "undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex" while introducing "questions about whether promotion is based on merit or quota requirements."
As for the "rise" of wokeness historically, Spoehr reports: "In 2015, then Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus rejected out-of-hand a Marine Corps study concluding that gender-integrated combat formations did not move as quickly or shoot as accurately, and that women were twice as likely as men to suffer combat injuries." It seems all progress stalled after that. Current status: "Now there is no test to determine whether any soldier can meet the fitness requirements for combat specialties."
Ah, but there is training: "last year the Navy released a training video to help sailors understand the proper way of using personal pronouns - a skill Americans have traditionally mastered in grade school. The video instructs servicemembers that they need to create a 'safe space for everybody' by using 'inclusive language'....
"Our fighting men and women are required to sit through indoctrination programs, often with roots in the Marxist tenets of critical race theory....
"The Biden administration's Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, decided last year to add Ibram X. Kendi's book, How to Be an Antiracist - one of the leading sourcebooks on critical race theory - to his list of recommended readings. To give an idea of how radical Kendi's book is, one of its famous (or infamous) arguments is that 'Capitalism is essentially racist,' and that 'to truly be antiracist, you also have to be truly anticapitalist.'"
In addition, "President Biden signed an executive order in 2021 requiring all organizations in the military - as well as in the rest of the federal government - to create Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices, to produce strategic DEI plans, and to create bureaucratic structures to report on progress towards DEI goals. The overall goal, Biden said, was 'advancing equity for all' - again using the Left's euphemism for achieving desired outcomes through discriminatory policies. ...
In 2021, "President Biden told a group of overseas Air Force airmen that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had determined that the greatest threat facing America was global warming - a claim the Joint Chiefs had to walk back. In the same vein, Biden signed an executive order imposing a massive regime of environmental goals and requirements for the Department of Defense. These goals included transitioning to all electric non-tactical vehicles by 2035, carbon-free electricity for military installations by that same year, and net zero emissions from those installations by 2050. ...
"Spending billions on woke programs while the Chinese are outpacing us on hypersonic weapons, quantum computing, and other important military technologies is one piece of evidence. Recent reports showing the military's dismal failure to gain new recruits in adequate numbers is another. ...
"These ideological policies move the military in a divergent direction from the American mainstream. In a recent poll of voters, for instance, 69 percent oppose the teaching of critical race theory in schools."
Spoehr concludes: "Most Americans are still proud and trusting of our military. But this trust and support cannot be taken for granted. If Americans perceive that the military is being exploited for political purposes or being used for experiments in woke social policies, that support will evaporate, and the consequences will be dire." <www.bit.ly/3Uux9Ez>
POSTSCRIPT, Sep 28 '22:
WOKEISM - middle school wanted to "hide new names and genders" of students from parents
+ the "growing chorus" of opposition to "The Established Church of Wokeness"
"Kansas Teacher Receives $95K Settlement after Suspension for Refusing to Use Student's Preferred-Pronouns" by Dillon Burroughs (DailyWire, Sep 1 '22) -- "Former math teacher Pamela Ricard challenged a school district policy that required her to use a student's preferred name while addressing the student but use the student's legal name when speaking to parents. She argued that the actions violated her conscience.
"Leaders at Fort Riley Middle School reprimanded and suspended Ricard in 2021 after she referred to a transgender student by the student's legal name and pronouns that corresponded with their biological sex.
"The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas allowed the case to move forward in May. The ADF also noted that the school board voted to revoke the parental communications policy after the court's ruling at the time. ...
"The Geary County School District unsuccessfully tried to convince a federal court that a teacher should completely avoid using a child's name during a parent teacher conference in order to hide new names and genders being used by the school for a child in a classroom." <www.bit.ly/3S7EWXa>
---
Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, by John McWhorter <www.bit.ly/3DTLGnc> reviewed by Joshua Mitchell (political theory, Georgetown University) -- John McWhorter (linguistics, American studies, and music history; Columbia University) has written an important book - a heretical book, really, because [he's black.] We ... might, with respect to its understanding of race in America, be tempted to invoke Rom. 1:22, and say of this new religion: 'Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.' Woke Racism is McWhorter's account of its foolishness. ...
"There should be little wonder that transgenderism is the leading edge of the outreach missionary work undertaken by the Establishment Church of Wokeness....
"John McWhorter has such sober hope. He is not a victim. As such, he belies that category into which he is supposed to fit. ...
"McWhorter argues that woke racism is a new religion. Like other religions, woke racism has superstitions, a clergy, original sin, evangelical outreach, an apocalyptic vision, heretics, and an eagerness to supplant earlier religions.
"One of the principal virtues of McWhorter's book is its psychological acuity. Woke racism is a disease; but it is a disease whose symptoms are only intermittently displayed. ...
"[T]he antidote to woke racism is enlightenment. This is McWhorter's position: 'A new religion in the guise of world progress is not advance; it is detour. It is not altruism; it is self-help. It is not sunlight; it is fungus. It is time it became ordinary to call it for what it is and stop cowering before it, letting it make people so much less than they - black and everyone else - could be.' ...
"An alternative account, which McWhorter does not consider, is that woke racism is in fact a deformation of Christianity, whose cure, therefore, cannot be enlightenment in the generally-understood sense, but rather a recovery of an undeformed Christianity....
"What do white and black Americans get from participating in woke racism? Whites, McWhorter proposes, get to be members of The Elect....
"What do black Americans get from the Establishment Church of Wokeness? ... [T]he strange comfort, familiar in the period of American slavery, that they can do nothing to thrive and flourish, unless the Elect provides it for them.
"That is why it is senseless to talk of personal responsibility. Nothing black Americans can do on their own, with their friends, with their families, and with their communities, can alter their fate. ... Individual agency, mediating institutions of the sort Tocqueville had in mind for all of us, the rule of law, the U.S. Constitutional framework - none of these can be of any help to black America.
"McWhorter does not make this point, but it is worth mentioning that black political thought in America, until the race grievance industry got fully underway, was characterized by an immense range of ideas, united by the understanding that human agency mattered. What has been disheartening, even frightening, is the extent to which in the hands of The Elect, this view has all but disappeared. ...
"McWhorter's proposed on-the-ground way of dealing with the Elect is of a piece with a growing chorus of thinkers on the right and even on the center-left. ... The Elect parishioners in the Established Church of Wokeness, who think they have found the key that unlocks the riddle of history, are in fact obstacles to the provisional achievement of justice that it is each generation's responsibility to establish." Law & Liberty, Aug 16 '22, <www.bit.ly/3Sy5YHc>
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