Decline of the News

As our time got swallowed up by Facebook and Google, we stopped paying attention to the media that once mattered most to us—particularly the news. In 2008, U.S. newspapers generated $38 billion in ad revenue. That number fell 27% the next year and continued to plummet. In 2020, newspaper ad revenue came out to less than $9 billion, a record low.

With falling revenue came a dwindling pool of journalists. In 2008, the number of newsroom employees across all channels in the U.S.— from print to television—was roughly 114,000. By 2020 that number had fallen 26%, to 85,000. If the number of American journalists served as a proxy measurement for our nation’s collective truth, the truth was in sharp decline.

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Newspaper Ad Revenue and Newsroom Employees

Sources: Pew Research Center, News Media Alliance, Bureau of Labor Statistics.