• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 15, 2024

Newspapers may have lost 77% of their jobs from 2004 to 2024 – a total of 88,100, reports state. But it’s not as bad as it looks, according to The Washington Post. 

Rather, the journalistic job count is flat, which is a victory in this field, the Post notes. There appear to be almost 300,000 people employed as editors and reporters, slightly more than in 1990.  

“America has about as many reporters and editors as it did three decades ago, according to our analysis of millions of responses to the Census Bureau’s decennial census and the American Community Survey, the twin pillars that support much of our modern data infrastructure,” the Post writes.

At the same time, there are more than 200,000 writers and authors, compared to around 100,000 in 1990. And, overall, the US has almost 10 percent more jobs than it did in 2000, the Post continues. 

Wait a minute.

We don’t believe these revised journalistic job counts – anecdotally, too many positions have been lost to say that employment is flat, and too many publications have gone out of business. Indeed, the Post notes that this is the most deflated industry in the country in terms of jobs. 

The Post also concedes it knew that “once we started pulling on threads, the whole cozy illusion would unravel.” They were right about that.