In era of news deserts, no easy fix for local news struggles
Published 6:00 am Saturday, January 19, 2019
NEW YORK — The local news industry hasn’t been the subject of much good news itself, lately.
Newspaper circulation is down sharply, and so is employment in the newspaper industry. Financial cutbacks have led to the shutdown of nearly 1,800 daily and weekly newspapers since 2004.
Two developments this week brought the issue into further focus. Facebook, whose success has contributed to the news business’ decline, announced Tuesday it would invest $300 million over three years in news initiatives with an emphasis in local coverage. More ominously, the hedge fund-backed Digital First Media, known for sharp cost-cutting strategies, bid to buy Gannett Co. , the publisher of USA Today and several daily newspapers across the country.
“It’s a struggle every day,” said Charles Sennott, a former newspaper beat reporter who co-founded The GroundTruth Project , a foundation that funds the work of journalists. “Every day we are facing the fact that American journalism is in crisis.”
Sennott was buoyed this week to meet with Obed Manuel, a young reporter at the Dallas Morning News whose coverage of Hispanic immigration is paid for in part by The GroundTruth Project.
Yet there was a pall over the newsroom they toured. The Dallas Morning News announced 43 layoffs last week, 20 of them newsroom employees, to cope with persistent declines in readership and advertising revenue.
That’s a familiar dynamic in the local news industry, where a positive development like Manuel’s hiring can feel like a tender shoot of green struggling to rise in a barren late-winter landscape.