The
Washington Post is cutting its headcount by 10%.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2023/10/10/washington-post-staff-buyouts/
If you can't make money in the news business in Washington, DC, with all its money, its high demand for political coverage and reporting, and I would imagine no small subsidy from subscriptions by people not from the immediate area who want that political coverage, then nobody can make money on news.
My wife and I used to work in newspapers. We think the role of the news media is very important, trying to keep the populace informed about what’s happening is key to society, and print media in general does a better, more thorough, and more comprehensive job of that than TV/online sources. And let’s face it, a pretty high percentage of news you find online started at a newspaper anyway.
That said, today’s population doesn’t care to get their information from newspapers. That’s led to a race to the bottom for print media, as they cut costs by slashing their staffs and making their product worse (Gannett, owner of the DMR and many other papers, is terrible for this, as mentioned they’re all becoming USA Today clones … but the CR Gazette is following a similar path, printing the paper in Des Moines instead of CR so the morning edition has no news
or sports coverage or high school scores from the previous evening, removing all color from the paper, cutting staff and moving their operations from the historic Gazette building to a tiny office space tucked under a parking ramp). It’s sad, but I can see why print media has to cut their costs - people aren’t buying their product anymore, they think they can get their news for free online.
I still don’t understand how newspaper owners think they can increase revenue by making their product
worse, though.