Newspapers Still Facing Troubles with Continued Job Loss

The decline of the newspaper industry is continuing as analysts report that overall another 10.4 percent of newsroom jobs have been lost. Minority jobs in the industry have also fallen to a new low level.

The annual survey of the industry by the American Society of News Editors was recently released, showing the nation’s newspapers are still in decline.

The study found that newspaper employment fell to 32,900 in 2014 from 36,700 in 2013.

Minorities were also hit hard, going from 13.4 percent of the industry’s employees last year to only 12.76 in the latest survey.

On the subject of minorities, “This year’s census,” the study’s authors say, “also found that the percentage of news organizations that reported having at least one woman among their top three editors remains steady at 63 percent. The number of minority leaders has dropped by 3 percentage points, with 12 percent of participating organizations saying at least one of their top three editors is a person of color.”

While newspapers with a circulation over 250,000 saw some small employment gains, midsize papers with between 100,000 and 250,000 circulations saw a decline of 21.8 percent of employees. Still smaller papers, though, also saw an increase in employees.

Newspaper employment hit a peak in 2011, reaching 56,400, according to the group.

Despite the small gains, though, analysts still feel that the industry is in decline.

In a recent blog post, Ken Doctor, a media analyst at the research firm Outsell, said, “If we project the recent decline forward, we’ll have one-half the number of daily journalists working in 2016 or 2017 as we did 16 years ago.”

The industry has lost while the rest of the U.S. economy has maintained or even grown slightly in the last two years.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.