San Diego, National Media Impacted by Coronavirus Fallout
Let’s step away from the Fake News/Establishment Conspiracy arguments for a few moments here and examine the impacts of the current pandemic on our nation’s current events purveyors.
San Diego Magazine--the first city magazine of its sort in the country--has folded up shop, laying off employees and ceasing publication. The publisher says this is just temporary. I think it’s permanent.
The San Diego Reader, which bills itself as the nation's largest alt-weekly, says it’s lost nearly 80% of its revenue and is appealing to its audience for donations to stay afloat.
San Diego’s City Beat’s web site is still up, but they have stopped regular postings at Facebook, and former contributors say it’s folded.
Nearly 30 Alt-Weeklies nationwide are struggling, according to Mother Jones.
Radio station Alt-949 has suspended local programming, KYXY has switched its format to a “Quarantine Christmas” format, with Christmas tunes 7 days a week Middays, Noon to 1 PM and evenings, 6 PM to Midnight. KFMB-FM has ditched morning hosts Chris Cantore and Meryl Klemow.
Although it’s probably not directly related to the coronavirus crisis, two dozen employees at the San Diego Union-Tribune or its associated nine community newspapers have accepted buyout offers. Most take effect on April 3.
These and other changes are, at least in part, because of the collapse of the retail economy. Shuttered stores and restaurants were all a big part of the for-profit financial picture.
From Union-Tribune coverage of San Diego Magazine’s shutdown:
In an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the county, which has 230 confirmed cases, hundreds of local businesses have shut down and slashed expenses to support operations and staff.
The California Restaurant Association said Sunday an estimated 60 percent of restaurants in San Diego County have chosen to close completely during the COVID-19 crisis, instead of continuing operations focused on takeout and deliveries.
Beth Demmon, who has been a contributing writer for San Diego Magazine since September, said she received the news of layoffs on Sunday. To Demmon, it wasn’t clear if the publication would restart once the spread of COVID-19 is contained or minimized.
“Who knows what the future will hold for media or any industry,” Demmon said. “I imagine that a majority of publications are supported by advertising and that’s going to be the first thing to go as businesses try to stay alive right now. Every penny they have is going elsewhere.”
Despite the local doom and gloom, people are increasingly relying on news organizations as the crisis unfolds.
From Times of San Diego:
During March 16-20, page views of news articles were 30 percent higher compared to the same time last year, according to news traffic data company Parse.ly. On some days last week, article views were 50 percent higher compared to the previous week. Parse.ly monitors content performance for more than 3,000 high-traffic sites, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, NBC, Conde Nast, Slate and TechCrunch.
In addition, an Ipsos national survey of 1,027 people, ages 18 and over, conducted March 13-15, confirmed that media consumption is increasing. One-third of respondents said they are consuming more news online and on TV.
The New York Times reports:
The number of minutes spent by readers at news sites increased 46 percent from the same period ending a few days ago last year, and overall visits rose 57 percent, according to a study of more than a dozen general news websites by comScore, a media measurement company.
Outlets showing big gains included The Atlantic, Business Insider, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and Wired, all of which doubled or nearly doubled the number of visits. Most outlets have made coronavirus-related articles available free to nonsubscribers.
A graphics-heavy story in The Washington Post on March 14 headlined “Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to ‘flatten the curve’” was its most-viewed article ever, a spokeswoman said.
Even with higher traffic, the decline in advertising is still a factor.
From the Poynter Report:
Earlier this month, Seattle Times executive editor Michele Matassa Flores wrote that despite offering coronavirus coverage for free, “this coverage has drawn new subscribers at record levels.”
Peter Kovacs, editor of The Advocate and Nola.com in Louisiana, wrote Monday that online traffic is running three to four times above normal and that the “pace of new digital subscriptions has more than doubled in March, even though we are making our coronavirus coverage available free of charge as a public service.”
Nevertheless, Kovacs added, “This week, we will be temporarily furloughing about a tenth of our 400-member workforce, and the rest of us will begin four-day workweeks. Our newsroom, with about 120 employees, is the largest in Louisiana, and the furloughs will chiefly impact people who cover sports and social events, which have been curtailed.”
While such cuts in Louisiana, as well as other news outlets across the country, have more to do with a coronavirus-related drop in advertising as opposed to a lack of digital subscriptions, it does show how important every dollar is.
Although there is still misleading and fact challenged content, Facebook has seen a surge in news readership for authoritative news sources, according to the New York Times.
As of Thursday, more than half the articles being consumed on Facebook in the United States were related to the coronavirus, according to an internal report obtained by The New York Times. Overall U.S. traffic from Facebook to other websites also increased by more than 50 percent last week from the week before, “almost entirely” owing to intense interest in the virus, the report said…
...Facebook’s revival as a dominant news hub is a striking shift. Sharing of news stories on the social network had declined for years, partly because the company tried to emphasize feel-good personal posts over polarizing national news.
As is true with just about all human endeavors, there will be no “back to normal” in the news media once the rate of infection ebbs. Despite some wishful (and pathetic) thinking by the right wing, the only remaining question is just how much damage will occur over the next year or so.
If you visualize the coronavirus as a tsunami, this is the moment where the tidal waters recede just before the real destruction occurs.
What you can do.
If you value local news and have the means, there has never been a better time to subscribe or donate to those operations.
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Kudos to Canada
We’re supposedly having a debate about whether killing grandparents or revving up the stock market is more important.
https://twitter.com/KarenBolen5/status/1242438122706628610?s=20
https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/1242452693823692801?s=20
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