Digital journalism Layoffs
media's place
Peretti = founder of BuzzFeed
Fact : Layoffs
BuzzFeed
after US presidential election --> shoddy/misleading content online
“legacy media” were also to blame.
too slow to shift to digital
the budgets for quality journalism = focused on the wrong places
creating a void that is filled by questionable sources
NY (2019)
❌ 2,100 jobs across the media
15% redundancy of its workforce
= ❌ 220 jobs
Vice
would lay off 10% of its workforce
Huffington Post, Yahoo, Pool,...
Job losses in legacy media ?
local and regional press in the US
jobs dropped by 45%
all US newsroom jobs (TV and radio)
jobs dropped by 23%
Media consumption habits on web
Why?
advertisers and readers shifted their attention to digital platforms
BUT difficult for companies to accept
= commercial internet makes profitable journalism impossible
68% --> news from social media platforms
primary source : Facebook
mistake of most digital publishers
imagine that Google, Facebook had interest in helping them
The amount of data large platform companies collect --> offer far more efficient advertising than any publisher
the beginning of a new publishing depression ?
US : lack of well-funded and abundant public media
how digital can be sustainable ?
on top of Facebook and YouTube but only when the content we make is high quality
content
❌ investigative reporting bc not cheap to produce
✅ something that attracts “massive scale”
Programme : Report for America --> Facebook/Google funding efforts at the local level to increase reporters and newsroom resources
problem : advertising resources
not the deliberate intention of Google, Facebook, Twitter to drain the advertising pool that supported journalism
BUT they did not particularly care whether publishers survived
Google/Facebook journalism support
Google/Facebook journalism support
largely ineffective
ethically awkward
Facebook’s traffic to BuzzFeed has dropped
conclusion
The future of journalism --> smaller
more challenging in the short term
uncertain in the long term
certain: a digital free market for journalism doesn’t work