If there was ever any evidence that the ongoing rise of the blogosphere was having an impact on newspapers as a whole – one needs to look no further than the graphical mashups and information being shared on the blog Paper Cuts:
For the new folks, a little history on this blog: In May 2007, Editor & Publisher ran a story about job cuts. (The story is no longer online, which is why I now copy stories into posts.) I talked about that story with other journalists. With nonjournalists. I blogged about it. But it seemed there was more — or should have been more. So I started a list of buyouts and layoffs at U.S. newspapers. (See the 2007 list.) All numbers come from people within the organization (Secret squirrel sources are always welcome!) or published reports. In December, I used Paper Cuts as an opportunity to learn how to create the map mashup — written using JavaScript and XML.
Paper Cuts notes that in 2007, newspapers cut more than 2,000 jobs in the last seven months alone – while in 2008 so far more than 3,020 newspaper jobs have been cut.
I know I see this in my local Minneapolis Star-Tribune where we’ve seen a significant number of job cuts and staff buyouts/reductions over the last three years – and more are expected.
In fact, if I’m a typical consumer of media – then newspapers are indeed in trouble – because I read several of them online, but only receive a single print paper – the Wall Street Journal.
