Newspapers

Mergers, closures and layoffs have affected many media organizations. Here are 10 charts on the state of newsroom employment in the U.S. today.

Newsroom employment across the United States continues to decline, driven primarily by job losses at newspapers.

U.S. newspaper circulation fell in 2018 to its lowest level since 1940, and newspaper revenues declined dramatically between 2008 and 2018.

Newspaper circulation in the U.S. reached its lowest level since 1940, and the audience for local TV news has steadily declined.

Newspapers are a critical part of the American news landscape, but they have been hit hard as more and more Americans consume news digitally.

One-in-five U.S. adults often get news via social media, slightly higher than the 16% who often do so from print newspapers.

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.

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.

A global median of 75% want their news media to be unbiased when covering political issues, yet many say the news media do a poor job of reporting on political issues fairly.

Read 10 key findings from recent Pew Research Center reports about today’s digital news media landscape.