by Randy Shaw on January 29, 2024 (BeyondChron.org)
Mass LA Times Layoffs Highlight Crisis
Last week’s layoff of 115 newsroom employees at the Los Angeles Times revived a longstanding question: can traditional newspapers survive in the age of rampant free media?
The LA Times layoffs occurred the same week as New York Daily News workers held a one-day strike (the paper is one of over 200 owned by investment firm Alden Global Capital). Plus the Baltimore Sun was just acquired by the executive chairperson of the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group.
That’s a lot of bad newspaper news to start 2024. A year with the future of American democracy on the ballot in November.
Those of my generation—boomers and older—continue to pay for newspapers. We grew up going outside to pick up the morning paper. That’s how we learned of the latest sports results and political happenings, read our favorite comics and heard about the newest films.
I subscribe online to the LA Times, SF Chronicle, NY Times and Chicago Tribune (the latter offered an opening discount of only $3 per year). I recently discontinued my subscription to the Boston Globe as I lacked time to read it.
But millennials and younger people grew up in a different world. Waiting for a morning paper to learn who won the preceding night’s basketball or baseball game seems like a bad joke. Sports and election results are found with a click on a phone or computer. Many young activists don’t pay for any newspapers or only subscribe to the online NY Times.
The demographic trends working against paid subscriptions have been steady. What’s so troubling about the LA Times layoffs is that the owner thought investing in a higher quality product would increase subscription and advertising revenue.
That didn’t happen. Instead, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s billionaire owner, saw losses of $30-40 million per year. Like other billionaires who buy newspapers, Soon-Shiong was not willing to continue accepting these losses.
Can Anything Save Newspapers?
The chief strategy for encouraging subscriptions—running articles behind a paywall—has not sufficiently worked. Newspaper advocates are now trying to follow the lead of Canada and Australia, which require tech giants to pay news publishers when they distribute their stories.
In California, East Bay Assembly member Buffy Wick’s 2023 bill (AB 886) would require companies like Google and Facebook to do the same. AB 886 passed the Assembly in 2023 but was held up in the Senate. It will be considered this year. If anyone can get such a bill passed its Wicks. But given the massive lobbying clout of Meta and Google—which are threatening to remove all news content from their site— passage will be a struggle.
What else can get those interested in news to pay to read it?
Invest in Columnists, Sports and Entertainment
All of the newspapers I subscribe to have either columnists worth reading or high quality sports and entertainment coverage. The LA Times used to have all three, and the owner blamed the loss of thousands of subscriptions on “last summer’s elimination of the print edition’s sports listings and box scores.” (The NY Times eliminated its long heralded sports section but replaced it with the high-quality reporting of The Athletic).
Columnists provide unique voices that people will pay to read. The same goes for movie reviewers whose recommendations people trust.
Many big city newspapers have few to no Asian-American or Latino columnists. I don’t believe the San Francisco Chronicle has ever had a single regular columnist who the city’s Asian-American and Latino communities viewed as representing their views.
Far too many urban newspapers still reflect and target the perspectives of white homeowners. That helps keep current subscribers but does not lay the groundwork for longterm survival.
The Power of Free News
Traditional newspapers have their flaws and biases (after all, I started Beyond Chron in 2004 because I was dissatisfied with local media). But those like the LA Times seek to inform on basic facts. In contrast, many online sites use “click bait” in place of substantive stories written by actual reporters. The 24/7 news cycle makes it hard for traditional newspapers to stay current while rewarding online “stories” that do not go beyond headlines.
Even before Twitter became X, cost-free access to tweets shaped how Americans got their news. A 2016 study found that Twitter barely increased readership for news organizations. Instead, once people read a tweet that includes the story title and brief summary they feel they got the facts they need.
I know from Beyond Chron that there is little correlation between the tweets a story gets and its readership numbers. Google News and other sites are the main drivers of traffic.
Distrust of Facts
The biggest obstacle newspapers now face is that millions of Americans no longer trust or believe in facts. Anything covered by a traditional newspaper is automatically suspect. Those believing the 2020 presidential election was stolen, for example, are not going to pay for a newspaper that claims otherwise. After all, there are hundreds of online news sources that “prove” Trump won in 2020.
I’ve seen studies showing Americans had a far greater belief in science in the 1940’s than in the 1980’s. It’s an anti-fact trend that preceded online news but is strengthened by it. This helps explain why there was little opposition to vaccines in the polio era versus the millions identifying COVID vaccines as killers.
I feel sorry for the many hard-working journalists who are losing their jobs at the LA Times and elsewhere. A lot has been written about the newspaper crisis in recent days, but none offer easy answers for the industry’s future.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
