9 charts about America’s newsrooms

America’s newsrooms are changing in important ways. Mergers, closures and layoffs have affected a variety of media organizations – especially newspapers – and these trends are reshaping the nation’s media landscape:

• Newsroom employment in the US dropped by 25% over the past decade. 
• The greatest decline in newsroom employment has occurred at newspapers. 
• Layoffs have pummeled US newspapers in recent years. Roughly a quarter of US newspapers with an average Sunday circulation of 50,000 or more (27%) experienced layoffs in 2018.
• The brunt of layoffs hit mid-market newspapers in 2018
• One-in-five newsroom employees live in New York, Los Angeles or Washington (DC)
• Newsroom employees are more likely than US workers overall to work in the Northeast.
• Newsroom employees are less demographically diverse than US workers overall.
• Newsroom employees with a college degree earn less than other college-educated workers.
• Newsroom employees are far more likely than college-educated workers overall to have a degree in the arts and humanities