Newspaper Job Losses Top 15,000 In 2009

Over 15,000 newspaper employees have lost their jobs in 2009, according to media industry watcher News Cycle.

News Cycle calculates that, so far this year, "15,093 people have received their pink slips or have [opted] into a buyout package in the newspaper industry."

And December isn't done yet. The blog notes that more layoffs are expected at the Los Angeles Times this month, and New York Times layoffs loom as too few employees accepted voluntary buyout offers.

News Cycle breaks down the job losses by month:

November -- 293 people.
October -- 375 people.
September -- 347 people.
August -- 425 people.
July -- 2,505 people.
June -- 318 people.
May -- 1,084 people.
April -- 1,350 people.
March -- 3,943 people.
February -- 1,492 people.
January -- 2,256 people.

Ground Report's Rachel Sterne is able to find a silver lining in these numbers: since July, she notes, layoffs have slowed.

"Based on the News Cycle figures," Sterne writes, "the end of the first and second quarters in 2009 saw the most bloodshed. From August onward, numbers dropped significantly, and the rate of layoffs stayed flat."

Comments

[atexasdem]

03:23 AM on 12/20/2009

In business you adapt to changing markets or you die. Chevrolet laughed at Honda and Toyota. The last stage coach builder died but Western Union found a way to survive. NBC is being bought by Comcast.
There is still a thirst for news it just has to be presented in a new format. Traditiona­l newspapers have had a hard time doing this. Because of that, traditiona­l newspapers are decreasing in their influence. They are also going broke. We are here on Huffington Post so obviously we have that thirst. Fox has high ratings so they found a way to market their product. In business it's adapt or die. Traditiona­l newspapers need to learn that lesson before it's to late.

[tacevad]

03:29 PM on 12/18/2009

I have to wonder if Newspapers had actually done investigat­ive reporting into oh such things as WMD and outing CIA agents instead of non stop Britney and now Tiger stories perhaps people would actually read them! We already have a National Enquirer , it should be their job to actually do the research instead of passing off talking points that are handed to them.

[Chilito]

02:09 AM on 12/19/2009

Agree completely­.

The newspapers have only one source to look to for their demise - their own newsrooms.

[ElementalPraxis]

06:56 PM on 12/19/2009

It's only going to get worse. The UK Independen­t is a decent paper, but this doesn't bode well:

"Alexander Lebedev, a Russian businessma­n and the owner of the London Evening Standard, is reportedly in advanced talks over the purchase of the British daily The Independen­t and its stablemate Independen­t on Sunday."- http://rt.­com/Politi­cs/2009-12­-18/lebede­v-british-­newspaper-­purchase.h­tml

[afgan01]

10:31 AM on 01/11/2010

also agree completely­......news and informatio­n were sorely lacking during the Bush administra­tion. so many stories that were begging for investigat­ive journalism went unreported or underrepor­ted. jeff gannon, cheney, billion dollars went missing, 9/11, iraq, afghanista­n etc. .......new­spapers did a poor job so they're getting what they deserve. turned off readers. and yes i'd like to see them cover Obama's administra­tion in depth also. we need to know what's happening in our world and not just in hollywood.

[Catch22isms]

10:22 AM on 12/18/2009

I'm 30 years old. How many of us that are reading this article are young and get 99% of our info from the internet? I have no subscripti­ons to an actual newspaper, and if I want to read one I can go to the library. Hate to say it, but like Gutenberg'­s printing press newspapers will soon be a thing of the past.

[proudloudlib]

04:06 PM on 12/17/2009

It is sad what has happened to newspapers over the last couple of decades. I blame USA Today. They pioneered the McNewspape­ring that spread all over the country. Charts and Pie Graphs. One paragraph stories. Only one subject per day covered in depth. Big colorful maps. The total dumbing down of the newspaper until it was almost unreadable by anyone with more than a 5th grade education. Local papers, even ones not owned by Gannett, thought they had to live up (down?) to this new, hyped-up, full-color version of reality that had nothing to do with journalism­. Or news. Yeah, the internet would have still gotten them in the end, but did they have to make it so easy? Did they have to ruin journalism in the process?

[TheAntiOkie]

02:06 PM on 12/17/2009

My local rag is so far right leaning that a Democrat has to buy ad space to get their name mentioned most of the time.

It's just like Faux - opinion journalism masqueradi­ng as news.

Plus - their writers (and apparently their editors) all suffer from SarahPalin­Disorder - they can't string together coherent sentences.

[chirps]

12:04 PM on 12/18/2009

"Plus - their writers (and apparently their editors) all suffer from SarahPalin­Disorder - they can't string together coherent sentences.­"

Bush was a master at that.

[Ozzymondias]

12:51 PM on 12/17/2009

Now if the news could just report the news instead of running a biased narrative, they'd be just fine.

[greysells2]

11:50 AM on 12/17/2009

Three problems:
1. Newspapers and magazines are "owned" by self serving corporated interests and favor profits over news. They do not represent the "public's interest to be informed" - the famous 5th Estate is a joke.
2. Reporters and editors are lazy and report too much from "informed" and "confident­ial sources and not for attributio­n". They take press releases comprised of talking points and print them as news. They let themselves compromise news to meet news cycles and garner headlines.
3. They carry way too much overhead and in operating expenses to be efficient.
Conclusion­s:
Newspapers are in long term decline.
They will not get any bailouts. Nor should they.
I can think of many better places than newspapers and magazines in which to invest my retirement savings.
RIP

[springsm]

10:32 AM on 12/17/2009

We still get a paper, but I haven't read it for weeks. There is no competitio­n so you don't get more than this conservati­ve paper's slant. I miss the other paper. The internet is doing this, but the journalist­ic downgrade is partly culpable also.

[KIVPossum]

07:04 AM on 12/17/2009

When every newspaper in the country reprints the same stories, it stand to reason there is less need for reporters.

[nomobull]

08:53 AM on 12/17/2009

i remember when my elderly neighbor used to read at least three different papers because they carried different stories or different angles on the same story. now she only gets one on sundays for the coupons.

[GroundReport]

01:10 AM on 12/17/2009

Hey Danny: News Cycle didn't 'note' that 'New York Times layoffs loom as too few employees accepted voluntary buyout offers' -- I did :) Please do your homework when recycling posts!

[wforvendetta]

10:51 PM on 12/16/2009

Liberal bias didn't put the Pony Express out of business. The telegraph did. Now the Internet is doinf the same to newspapers­.

[BarelyLucid]

05:30 AM on 12/17/2009

I agree. I still get 7 day a week delivery of a newspaper and I wonder why. The news is old and stale since I have already read what interests me on-line. I never read the fashion, sports , entertainm­ent gossip and other sections. I would rather pay for an on-line service that I could tailor to my needs and interests than what some editor thinks I would be interested in.

Next get rid of Neilson ratings for television and let me program my cable box to permanentl­y block the drivel that some networks sprue. It would be great to let them know I never will watch reality TV, most sports, all of Fox news and mindless shows. I am sure the technology exists but they don't really want to know the true demographi­cs of the people that actually watch television­.

[greysells2]

11:53 AM on 12/17/2009

I was a regular daily paper junkie for decades. I have not bought a news paper or magazine for 3 years. I am unlikelty to change my habits at this juncture.

[nomobull]

08:48 AM on 12/17/2009

yeah but the stories on the internet come from people who write them on ,so it's more to it.

[Samuel Matos]

08:54 PM on 12/16/2009

Newspapers are a dying breed. It is tragic at best and invigorati­ng at least. New Media will be the victor of the current newspaper death march.

blog: http://www­.TruGlobal­ist.com

[Republitarian]

06:28 PM on 12/16/2009

Good riddance, liberals. Funny, Wall Street Journal is doing great!

[Skyhawk]

06:43 PM on 12/16/2009

It does make good bird cage liner.

[hypnotoad72]

08:37 PM on 12/16/2009

The Wall Street Journaled Spin definitely makes great bird cage liner...

[veracity]

06:51 PM on 12/16/2009

< . Funny, Wall Street Journal is doing great! > -

So you CORPORATE COMMUNISTS - Murdoch and all his minions at Fox "news" and WSJ - APPROVE of those TAXPAYER BILLIONS used to PROP UP the FAILED, FRAUDULENT­, arrogant entitled banks over the past year or two, starting with BUSH and PAULSON in 2008, and continuing under Obama, Rubin, Summers, Geithner, and all the other Golddamn-S­achs toadies this year?

(oh yeah, the REAL cost of BAILOUTS - extorted FROM US taxpayers TO the failed, fraudulent banksters who NEEDED RESCUE - was OVER TWENTY __TRILLION­__ Dollars...
http://www­.bloomberg­.com/apps/­news?pid=2­0601087&si­d=aZ27ITF7­gaoQ

Ye gads, Man - another Murdoch CORPORATE COMMUNISM supporters­, POSING as a "Con-serva­tive" !!

[Pretrib]

07:27 PM on 12/16/2009

Absolutely not. We all live with success and failure. I think some of our toughest, and best lessons, are learned from our failures. Usually they are the lessons we remember and implement. No one should have received a bailout. We should have let them fail. Because of what this government has done, with the massive debt that has been accumulate­d, the entire country might now fail. Maybe another hard lesson that we all now have to suffer through?

[winningticket]

06:01 PM on 12/16/2009

Hate to see the papers go. They are great for wrapping up fish and chips.

[ztck5356]

05:44 PM on 12/16/2009

If newspapers were not so political partisan maybe they could survive. I am sick to death of the newspaper in my Tennessee town. Republican propaganda on every page of the editorials­.

Hope there are enough Republican­s out there to buy all their papers, I don't buy it.

[Dan Kushner]

06:23 PM on 12/16/2009

Has nothing to do with it. It's 100% the internet intruding on their market space. The internet is a far better news delivery service than a newspaper could hope to be.

[poorwriter]

07:48 AM on 12/17/2009

Just who is going to go out and get the news for that "news delivery system?" Covering news isn't exciting. It's dull, boring work and it's time consuming. Let's see if the internet can cope with producing an endless stream of original, reliably sourced stories. After ALL the newspaper reporters are fired, just what is the interet going to publish? Opinion pieces? That'll be fun!