No. 12: Upheaval – Media’s New Normal

Late-stage media may be upon us. A few things to consider: it’s a system trying to get bigger audiences than ever, but it’s one that is more fragmented than ever while actually controlled by a relative few, as it employs less people, and arguably informs less, thereby meaning less. Waiting for some sort of stabilization seems futile at this point. Constant upheaval and “reinvention,” as executives like to put it, is the new normal.      Look no further than media’s year in 2019. Yet another 12 months of thousands of editorial layoffs (around 3,500 among strict editorial roles, according to Columbia Journalism Review), of financial instability, of scrambling to offer advertisers new services to keep them from spending their entire ad budgets with the as yet unstoppable Facebook and Google. Essentially all publishers are now pivoting their business to digital, but Facebook and Google, along with an emerging Amazon, combined are taking 60 percent of digital advertising in the U.S., a number that’s only expected to grow. It was also another year of consolidation, of independent and well-read outlets selling to another operation simply to stay afloat. Or on the flipside, larger operations trimming to a shadow of their former selves to stay

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