Ben Berkowitz

If you work in news long enough, you get used to the Journalism Labor Cycle:

• January: New budgets!
• February: Apply, apply, apply!
• March: Maybe interviews?
• May: We’re gonna hold off a little while …
• September: Sorry, hiring freeze. Next year?
• December: Merry Christmas, here’s a layoff

There are variations, to be sure, but that’s usually a decent rough approximation of how it works, or how it used to work anyway.

Not anymore. In the Year of Our Anguish 2024, layoffs came early and they came often. Arena Group, Univision, Forbes, the L.A. Times, The Messenger, Insider, NBC News, Time, Pitchfork … probably missed some in there too.

But why? Why so early in the year?

• Traffic is down. (Secular and long-term.)
• Ad revenue is down. (If you’re not selling midroll video you’re not selling squat.)
• Public interest in the stuff they were supposed to be interested in (elections) is nil.
• Rich proprietors are tired of losing money.
• Old formats don’t work, old business models don’t work.
• The Vibecession.

And so we get a reckoning. Which leads to the inevitable question … ok genius, now what?

In 2024, the audience wants the content they want (and nothing else), on the platform they like, in the format they prefer, at the time and place of their choosing.

The “make it once and publish it once and they will find it” model is dead, gone, RIP, this parrot is deceased, etc. The name of the game is small-scale, niche, customization, roll your own, build your lists – DIY News, basically.

Sure it’s still a “winners win” business, but you can’t fight the search algorithms, you can’t fight the social networks, you can’t fight the AI, so your best option now is to deliver high value on a small scale to a discrete audience that needs that content and can’t get it elsewhere.

</rant>