Hopes that US newspaper employment may be stabilising have been dashed by findings compiled by the Pew Research Center which show that a third of large publishers have laid off additional staff since 2017.
Hard-pressed newsrooms have been steadily emptying as publishers strive to cut costs amid dwindling print subscriptions, with 36% of the largest US newspapers experiencing losses between January 2017 and April 2018.
This pattern was repeated among digital-native news outlets with 23% contracting as newsrooms across America continue to empty at an alarming rate, driven by the recent takeover of a number of high-profile titles such as The Denver Post by hedge funds which have proceeded axe employees.
Pews findings were based on its analysis of newspaper articles reporting redundancies at 1,100 newspapers and 35 digital-only platforms such as Mashable, Gizmodo and BuzzFeed, leading it to conclude that of 110 daily newspapers analysed, 40 had experienced a reduction in employees over the 16-month study period.
Larger titles were more likely to have contracted than their smaller brethren with nine of 16 newspapers (56%) with circulations of 250,000 and above shrinking compared with just 16 of 44 newspapers with circulations in the range of 100,000 to 249,999, equivalent to 36%
By John Glenday
