Coronavirus pandemic hitting newspaper industry hard
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Senior media figures in the UK have warned of the coronavirus “perfect storm” hitting newspapers, saying the drop in circulation and ad revenue could lead to some outlets disappearing completely. They echoed similar concerns of the newspaper industry elsewhere in the world.
A sector that has been struggling for a while due to readers moving online, the coronavirus lockdown – now in its seventh week in the UK – has accelerated its decline.
Local news in the UK has been hit particularly hard – 50 titles have stopped appearing in print, despite them being a lifeline to local communities and people self-isolating.
In comments to Sky News, Jim Waterson, media editor of The Guardian, said that as many people have stopped commuting to work, those who previously read a physical paper are “suddenly realising they are happy for the online equivalent”, he says.
Newspapers in this country are heavily reliant on print sales to subsidise free online content – so a drop in circulation, combined with advertisers pulling their content, has had a devastating effect.
“This is basically a perfect storm,” Mr Waterson says. “This is an already struggling industry that has seen one of its main sources of revenue collapse at the same time that its other source of revenue has also collapsed, and the end result might be that we see closures of outlets that people take as part of everyday life.”
The newspaper industry could lose well over a billion pounds by the end of 2020. Circulation has fallen by around 40% since lockdown started, experts were quoted as saying, while ad revenue is down by between 50% and 80%.
