Every day it feels like more bad news for journalism.

We no longer have a commercial market that can support the levels of journalism that

democracy requires.

One professor's plan for a new economic model

to preserve the news industry.

There are creative ways to really not just

decommercialize, but also democratize the system.

I'm Naila Boodoo from Axios.

This is one big thing. Last year was one of the worst in recent memory for layoffs across media.

Job losses in digital, broadcast, and print news increased almost 71% from 2022, according to a recent report from

Challenger Gray in Christmas.

2023 and so far in 2024, have been more cuts layoffs cost cutting measures

than the industry has seen since perhaps the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008.

I excuse media reporter Sarah Fisher says there are three main reasons for this.

One, the stagnation in the ad market.

Two high interest rates has made it really hard for media companies to raise debt or even to finance

mergers and acquisitions. And then three, there's been a slowdown in news consumption ever

since the end of the Trump era. And 2024's already started off with more cuts.

In recent weeks it seems particularly bad.

Victor Picard is a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania.

He says this downward trend goes back some 20 years.

Since 2005 we've seen a loss of two-thirds of our newspaper journalists and about a third of our newspapers.

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