Newsrooms hit harder than other departments

Alan Mutter [Reflections of a Newosaur] says his figures confirm suspicions that newsrooms have been hit harder than other departments at newspaper companies. He figures that a fifth of the 3,775 job losses that Paper Cuts counted in 2011 came from newsrooms.

With the ASNE reporting that 52,600 journalists were on the job in 2007, then the projected newsroom headcount at the end of this year would be 22% lower than it was in 2007. In other words, the decline in newsroom employment has been twice as great since 2007 as the 11% drop in over-all industry employment. This also means … that newsroom staffing now is at the lowest level since the ASNE inaugurated its newsroom census in 1978.