Recession and the newspaper industry

As global markets go into panic mode, it's a good time to consider what a deep and prolonged recession would do to employment in the news industry. Especially the newspaper industry, for which 2007 was another bleak year.

During times like this, I think of my former employer, The Miami Herald. It offered buyouts in the wake of the 2001 downturn after the dot-com burst, but mainly has relied on attrition since, not to mention round after round of expense cuts. Last month the paper announced would outsource certain copy editing duties to India, only to reverse course recently. What's interesting is that they considered outsourcing some editing of the Neighbors sections, the most "local" of news products. Not only is news judgment a competitive advantage newspapers need to maintain, as Steve Yelvington points out very well, but the local news, of all the copy flowing through the system, needs the closest scrutiny — and certainly "local eyes" on it.

Still, this raises the specter of what we might see in 2008 from the newspaper industry: Increased outsourcing? (which isn't necessarily bad if done right) Job losses through automation? Or more of the slow-bleed attrition that has been the norm at many newspapers for several years? Probably all three and more. What's clear is that newspaper journalists, like newsworkers and mediaworkers generally, increasingly must build and maintain their own personal competitive advantage — e.g., through skills with new media, or at least an open-mindedness that's so often missing in newsrooms — if they are to withstand the job erosion that could get quite nasty in a recession.