The worst year in digital media history
More than 20,000 jobs have been lost
A song to read by: “Pretend,” by Alex G
What I’m reading: “Barbarian Days,” by William Finnegan
Published this week
— Bustle Publisher Revenue Drops 10% as CPG and Parenting Brands Falter
— Enthusiast Gaming Lays Off Almost 10% of Staff As Revenues Slip
On my mind
In the media industry, the story of the last several weeks has been the historic sweep of layoffs sweeping the field.
Off the top of my head, publishers including Condé Nast, The Washington Post, Recurrent Ventures, Vox Media, G/O Media and Vice Media have all laid off significant swaths of their workforce in the last month alone.
I have covered a number of these layoffs, and I know there are more to come. At times like these, I joke to friends that I feel like an obituaries reporter. The situation is grim, and it has nothing to do with individual performance. The decline, as they say, is secular.
But zooming out, the picture only gets worse, not better.
As of October, the industry had lost over 20,000 jobs this year alone. Extrapolating from this report compiled by Axios, I think it is accurate to say that this has been the worst year in the history of digital media — worse even than when the pandemic struck.
In the chart above, you can see that in 2020, the industry shed thousands of jobs in the first half of the year, just like this year. But in 2020, the cuts stopped and the economy began to rebound by the back half of the year.
This year, every month has been a steady drip of reductions, and the cuts have reached a fever pitch in the last six weeks. Some publishers have even had two and three rounds of layoffs. To say morale is low is an understatement.
Frustratingly, there is little light at the end of the tunnel. The portion of the digital advertising pie that publishers make up continues to shrink. Next year, when Google deprecates third-party cookies across its properties, almost all but the most sophisticated publishers will take a further hit to their advertising revenues.
In reality, what you and I think of as “the internet” is, perhaps surprisingly, considered one of the worst places to advertise, at least compared to channels like social media, search or retail media. For most marketers, it is an afterthought, a nearly indefensible waste of money.
This is why so many publishers have begun investing in channels that have little to do with the internet at all. They are raising the white flag and returning to the natural scarcity of the physical world. The return of print media, the resurgence of live events and even the emphasis on subscriptions — these are realms in which publishers do not have to compete against platforms, which is why they have become so popular.
For all the pessimism of the situation, most journalists have little choice but to whistle past the graveyard. What else can we do? People will continue to need news, and so at least some small percentage of the population will, presumably, be able to find work in the field forever. Most people just — or must — labor under the delusion that they will be part of the group that makes it.
But in light of recent events, covering layoff after layoff, I find it has been helpful to name the problem, to nail down its scope. This year has been the worst year in the history of digital media. It could even be the worst in the history of media — period — but I do not know that for a fact. It has certainly been the worst year since I have been in the industry.
Eventually, maybe, my hope is that we will look back on this period as a time of immense transition, one in which the information ecosystem lurched painfully from the analog world to the digital one.
If that were the case, then at least some point the bleeding will be staunched. At a certain point, that is all I want — a chance to work in a field whose workforce does not contract every year. Some days, like today, I wonder if even that is too much to ask.
The week that was
A weird week! I published fewer stories but had a great one on the challenges facing Bustle Digital Group, which, as I hope I have laid out above, are hardly about the company itself but rather about the industry writ large.
On Tuesday I finally got to eat at Wenwen in Greenpoint, which I had been eager to visit. The next day, I went to an event hosted by the Martech Record and after swung by going-away drinks for my Adweek colleagues Chris Ariens and Jessica Sejeck.
On Thursday evening I flew to Seattle, where I will be for the remainder of the holidays. I’m staying with my family just outside the city, and we had a long-lost cousin and his wife crash with us over the weekend, so it has a full house — exactly what you want this time of year. We bought seafood at Pike Place and I made paella for the first time, and despite not yielding any socarrat, I was pleased with the final product.
One good rumor
This year, among other themes, has been the year of the resurrected blog. Without spilling any beans, I can tell you that on Thursday another reader favorite is set to return.
Some good readin’
— A compelling case that Sunday Night Football is the only thing keeping America from falling apart and linear television from cratering into decline. (New York Times Magazine)
— Tarpley Hitt doing for The New Yorker what the publication does best: Writing about an extremely weird person with a lot of power. (The New Yorker)
— Speaking of The New Yorker, Lauren Sherman does a deep dive on the agonies of Condé Nast. (Puck)
Cover image: "The Hunt in the Forest,” Paolo Uccello
heartbreaking, and sadly unsurprising