SCARY!!!!

Daily and Sunday Circulation Declines: data from the 2008 Annual Report on American Journalism

That is the first word that come to my mind as I am hearing about ongoing events in the newspaper business and most recently reading Lou Heldman’s blog post a few days ago.

I have recently heard that newspapers nationwide are offering buyouts to their employees. More specifically, as I discovered after a brief googling, on August 16, McClatchy announced plans to cut approximately 10 percent of its employees, which as Kansas City Business Journal calculates, is close to 1,400 workers.

Cramping the newspaper staff in order to cut the expenses is nothing new especially after the emergence of the online news. Not too long ago a friend from the Wichita Eagle who was with the company for several years was laid off. He was the newspaper’s photographer and now he is not planning to go back into the same business. It not only that he is ready to try something different, but the question is whether he would be able to get the same job somewhere else. On the other hand, I just meet two of my classmates who are enrolled in at the Elliott School of Communication

Do any newspapers hire anymore?

As a graduate with bachelor’s in print journalism, this is the question that obviously boggles me these days.

I still have a lot of optimism..

Contrary to the gloomy happenings in the newspaper business in the United States, I have a strong feeling that this trend did not reach other countries. Or if it did the direction is not yet equally extreme.

I just meet two of my classmates who are enrolled in at the Elliott School of Communication. Their emphasis is print journalism. Brave, not a wrong choice, that I believe the industry needs to nurture, not bury.