America’s legacy media are in big trouble.
Newspapers are losing record print circulation, morning and nightly network news shows are hemorrhaging viewers, and cable news outlets are losing audiences at a record rate.
So what’s going on?
As someone who spent almost 30 years toiling in the newspaper world and then teaching journalism at the University of Illinois, I have arrived at some conclusions about the demise of ethical and trustworthy journalism in America.
But first, here are some figures that will support my analysis. These numbers come from reliable media sources such as Adweek, Mediaite, Deadline, The Hill, the Audit Bureau of Circulation, and the Alliance for Audited Media.
Let’s look at newspapers first. In the past four years, print circulation at the Washington Post is down 47%. During the same period, circulation at the Los Angeles Times plummeted by 73%. The New York Times has seen its circulation tumble 43%.
At the Chicago Tribune, print circulation in the past decade has fallen to 73,000 on weekdays and 172,000 on Sundays—a 75% decline. When I began my career at the Tribune in 1970, daily circulation was about 800,000; on Sundays, it was about 1.1 million.
Newspaper industry pundits once insisted that the loss of print circulation would be made up with online versions of newspapers. That has not happened.
In 2006, U.S. newspapers took in $49 billion in advertising revenues. By 2022, that amount had fallen to less than $10 billion. I suspect that in 2024, that number may be less than $8 billion.
Advertisers have not flocked to the online versions of newspapers. As a result, newspapers have had to substantially increase their print newspapers’ subscription prices, forcing subscribers to pay at least three and four times more for a newspaper delivered to their door or driveway.
I could stop here and tell you that the decline of American newspapers is primarily the result of readers moving to social media, network television, and cable news outlets.
But that would be wrong.
Except for social media networks, television news shows and cable news outlets are also losing viewership.
Why?
Like newspapers, television and cable news shows have lost credibility with the American public. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 7% of Americans have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media. Another 27% say they have “only a fair amount” of trust in the nation’s newspapers, networks, and cable news providers. That means that 66 percent of Americans no longer trust the mainstream media to provide honest, unbiased, and truthful news.
They say America’s legacy media has shifted from the political middle and presents news with a leftist bias.
The result is plummeting viewership of network news shows. Take a look:
Prime-time cable news shows are not faring well either when it comes to viewership:
So what’s happening? Well, for one thing, cable news, the original competitor to TV network news, now serves a primarily baby-boomer audience. The median ages of Fox, CNN, and MSNBC viewers are between 67 and 71.
What do these numbers mean? It means that half of U.S. adults now get their news, at least partly, from social media. That has sharply cut into revenues for newspapers and other publishers of news content. Digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google have sucked up most of the advertising dollars that, for decades, had underwritten most legacy journalism.
Digital platforms like these and newer ones such as TikTok, etc., are not only shaping how Americans get their news – they’re increasingly leading them away from traditional news altogether by deprioritizing news in their algorithmic feeds. Paradoxically, while today’s news consumers have greater access than ever before to a wide range of information, much of it for free, many younger Americans are choosing a daily diet of podcasts, videos, and other digital content that largely sidesteps traditionally produced and vetted “hard news.”.
In a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, 32% of respondents ages 18-29 said they regularly get their news on TikTok, which favors untrustworthy, short-form, user-generated videos.
According to a recent report in the Christian Science Monitor, “a crop of news influencers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok has been trying to reach younger audiences who are skeptical or indifferent toward traditional journalism. They aggregate and analyze news, downplay partisan spin, and use comments to respond to readers and to decide what topics to cover next.”
It led the author of the CSM story to ask: “Are we entering a ‘post-news’ era?”
It’s a good question. The constant decline in newspaper circulation and network and cable news viewership is not fiscally sustainable as younger audiences shift to podcasters like Joe Rogan and Charlamagne tha God, who mingle conversations about news and events with entertainment while shunning the standards of traditional journalism.
If we enter a “post-news era,” what does that say about the future of our democratic republic?
A free, independent, and trustworthy news media has always been considered indispensable to a democratic nation.
However, when the electorate gets most of its news and information from TikTok and a pack of unqualified and predisposed podcasters rather than from skilled, professional journalists, I shudder to think about the quality of information Americans must use to make informed decisions about political and financial issues.
Al Gore once said, “The digital revolution has made every citizen a potential journalist.”
My response? God help us!
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