Big Newspaper Publishers Cut Work Force 7% in 2011

While 2011 saw fewer announcements of layoffs and buyouts in the newspaper industry than previous years, attrition continued quietly and relentlessly, with the nation’s biggest newspaper publishers trimming their combined work forces by 7.2% over the course of the year. The total newspaper headcount fell from 55,537 at the end of 2010 to 51,564 at the end of 2011. Not coincidentally, all these publishers also faced continuing ad revenue declines. Read more here

an internet minute

The news media's imploding business model

Smartphones will soon be the primary news source for most Americans. That's if anyone can still make money by reporting. Pew research has a new survey showing that tablets and smart phones are now 27% of Americans' primary news source. The overwhelming share of this is phones, not tablets; and a reasonable view says this will rise to 50% in three years. Makes sense: just as radio became one of the big purveyors of news because it was the medium that traveled with you, so should mobile. If the news business on the web is depressing, contributing to the existential angst that has gripped every established news organization, mobile turns the story apocalyptic: there is no foreseeable basis on which the news establishment can support itself. There is no way even a stripped-down, aggregation-based, unpaid citizen-journalist staffed newsroom can support itself in a mobile world. Read more here

Watching TV and doing Social Media

Read more here