The weekly briefing email from Editor & Publisher – America’s Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry just hit my inbox and the lead article title hit me harder:
More Than 2,000 Newspaper Jobs Lost In 2005.
The article starts by saying:
“With costs rising and circulation on the decline, newspaper companies have responded by trimming a considerable portion of their staffs this year. A review of past news reports offers up a startling number: more than 1,900 jobs have been cut from major and mid-sized newspapers over the past year. That figure does not include cuts at many smaller papers that don’t often garner the same headlines.”
Guess where all of this traffic has gone? Yup… right here.
It’s not just the online space, but it’s also about you and me. Instant Personal Publishing (Blogs, Podcasting, etc…) is adding to the death toll of print. The article goes on to show specific numbers at specific publishing companies and promises to update the article online as changes occur (you can RSS feed the link). Keep in mind, this is just newspaper jobs and does not include magazines, etc…
As a society, we’re still feeling the pain as production jobs are being outsourced or moved towards technology instead of humans. Dan Pink’s latest book, A Whole New Mind, speaks to how our society is changing and what skills will be needed to survive and thrive as we move forward. Sadly, being part of the conceptual class that still works within older publishing media puts people at risk.
You can read the full article here – Editor & Publisher Magazine – More Than 2,000 Newspaper Jobs Lost In 2005.