Nearly 2,800 newspaper companies received paycheck protection loans, and most were under $150K
Though this figure is a sliver of all PPP loans lent out to small businesses as of August, it represents a large segment of U.S. newspaper companies.
10 charts about America’s newsrooms
Mergers, closures and layoffs have affected many media organizations. Here are 10 charts on the state of newsroom employment in the U.S. today.
U.S. newspapers have shed half of their newsroom employees since 2008
Newsroom employment across the United States continues to decline, driven primarily by job losses at newspapers.
Decade-long decline in newsroom employment hit midcareer workers the hardest
Newsroom employment dropped by a quarter between 2008 and 2018, but the job cuts were not shouldered equally by journalists of all ages.
One-in-five U.S. newsroom employees live in New York, Los Angeles or D.C.
About one-in-five newsroom employees (22%) live in these three metro areas, which, by comparison, are home to 13% of all U.S. workers.
About a quarter of large U.S. newspapers laid off staff in 2018
Mid-market newspapers were the most likely to suffer layoffs in 2018. Digital-native news outlets also faced continued layoffs.
Newsroom employees are less diverse than U.S. workers overall
Newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than U.S. workers overall. There are signs, though, of a turning tide: Younger newsroom employees show greater racial, ethnic and gender diversity than their older colleagues, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
Newsroom employees earn less than other college-educated workers in U.S.
Newsroom employees are more than twice as likely as other U.S. workers to be college graduates. But they tend to make less money than college-educated workers in other industries.
About a third of large U.S. newspapers have suffered layoffs since 2017
Newspaper layoffs have far from abated in the past year, and digital-native news outlets are also suffering losses. At least 36% of the largest U.S. newspapers and at least 23% of the highest-traffic digital-native news outlets experienced layoffs between January 2017 and April 2018.
As news business takes a hit, the number of black journalists declines
The number of black journalists working at U.S. daily newspapers has dropped 40% since 1997. That represents a loss of almost 1,200 journalists — from 2,946 in 1997 to 1,754 in 2013.
