HuffPost: The Pandemic Is Crushing The Journalism Industry. The Government Could Save It.

Three years ago, Matt DeRienzo surveyed America’s journalism landscape and issued a dire warning that most reporters didn’t want or need to hear.

“The last recession was brutal for newspapers and local news,” wrote DeRienzo, who at the time was the director for a nonprofit organization that supported local online news outlets. “The next one could be an extinction-level event.”

The next one is here now, thanks to the economic crunch brought about by the novel coronavirus outbreak. The sudden shock has clobbered an industry that had already lost nearly 30,000 jobs ― roughly a quarter of its reporters ― over the last decade, as its advertising-based revenue model proved anachronistic in the age of the internet. City- and statewide lockdowns have further reduced revenues, even as readership soars, so each day now brings news of another round of layoffs, furloughs or pay cuts from somewhere in the beleaguered industry.

“It’s even worse than I thought it’d be,” DeRienzo said last week, “because no one predicted this.”

The scale and speed of the economic crisis has inspired journalists to turn to an unlikely source for help: Congress. The News Media Alliance, one of the newspaper industry’s top trade groups, and the NewsGuild, journalism’s biggest labor union, have each called on Congress for emergency stimulus assistance to prevent layoffs and keep journalists working and news outlets in business amid the crisis. This week, a dozen U.S. senators said a future stimulus package should include support for local news outlets.

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